bush-isms

In Japanese, you can add the verb “suru” to certain nouns to make them “doing” verbs. Some common ones are “benkyo-suru” (to study) and “ski-suru” (to ski). But I learned a new one today in linguistics class that I just had to share.

In the early nineties, President Bush the senior visited Japan. All was going well until he threw up at a state banquet. Almost immediately, a new vocabulary word was formed. For the next four years, Japanese citizens used “bush-suru” as another way to say “to vomit.”