From NPR's "Fresh Air", from WHYY
Refudiate? Repudiate? Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
By Geoff Nunberg
The most revealing thing about politicians' linguistic gaffes and malaprops is the weird reactions they evoke. Take Sarah Palin's refudiate. She first used the word in a TV interview, calling on Barack and Michelle Obama to "refudiate" the NAACP's charge about racist elements in the Tea Party movement. Then lest anyone think it was a slip, she posted on Twitter asking peaceful Muslims to "refudiate" the Ground Zero mosque. That tweet was deleted almost immediately and soon replaced by one that used reject. But Palin wasn't about give ground. In another tweet, she suggested that she had deliberately coined the word. She went on, "English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"...
But it was clear in the context that Palin didn't coin refudiate in a flash of mavericky creativity — that it was just her version of repudiate. Plenty of other people have gotten those same wires crossed in the past; the New York Times language columnist Ben Zimmer found examples of refudiate going as far back as 1925....