Welcome to the big league. A talked-about phrase used by Donald Trump during the first presidential debates made a return for his final face-off with Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, October 19, in Las Vegas, and no one can tell if he’s saying “bigly” or “big league.”
The Republican presidential candidate, 70, used the word while discussing his immigration plan. “You can come back in, and you can become a citizen, but it’s very unfair. We have millions of people who did it the right way. They’re on line. They’re waiting. We’re going to speed up the process [bigly/big league] because it’s very inefficient.”
During the first debate on September 26, the business mogul turned politician used the expression while speaking about taxes. “I’m going to cut taxes [bigly/big league], and you’re going to raise taxes [bigly/big league]. End of story,” he said.
The former Apprentice host’s son, Eric, clarified after the first debate that his father was actually saying “big league,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
While either is technically grammatically correct, Twitter had a field day with the wording.
“Get some sleep, all you Bad Hombres who stayed up for #debatenight — for tomorrow is another, bigly day!” one Twitter user wrote, while another added, “Stop trying to make bigly happen.”
One tweeter summed up the whole night perfectly. “This #debatenight gives me a bigly headache #makebiglyaword.”
Merriam-Webster noted that “bigly” was one of the top dictionary searches during the final showdown between the two candidates. “Top lookups right now: big(ly), hombre, entitlement, ombre, regime #debatenight,” the official Merriam-Webster Twitter account wrote.
