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Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) revealed in a recent podcast interview that he had been invited to an organized crime meeting by an unnamed colleague and witnessed other prominent Washington figures doing “a key bump of cocaine right before” him.
On Wednesday, it became evident that members of Cawthorn’s party were not pleased with his remarks. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) delivered a public rebuke to Cawthorn: “There’s no evidence to this,” McCarthy reportedly told reporters according to Axios.
Not immediately obvious is what constitutes a “key bump”
As it has done in recent years, Merriam-Webster’s Twitter account offered clarification. “People are talking about ‘key bumps,'” it wrote in a Wednesday tweet, “and so we feel an obligation to tell you some things about this.”
Merriam-Webster defined “key bump” as “a small quantity of an illicit drug that is inhaled powdered form at one time.” Thus, an English speaker could refer to such amounts as “key bumps” when discussing small amounts of drugs sniffed off keys.
People are talking about ‘key bumps,’ so we feel compelled to inform you of a few facts about this phenomenon
On Thursday morning, Cawthorn’s tweet had amassed more than 42,000 likes and retweets. However, McCarthy insisted the freshman Republican “did not tell the truth.”
Cawthorn did not respond to messages sent from The Washington Post on Wednesday or early Thursday.
Merriam-Webster’s “key bump” tweet marked the second time this week that it entered the political discourse. On Tuesday, it addressed the term “burner phone,” after The Post and CBS News reported there was an unusually long gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs during his Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill. Now, a House committee investigating the insurrection is investigating whether Trump used burner phones that day, according to reports.
In response, Trump expressed ignorance of what a burner phone actually is
On Tuesday, Merriam-Webster offered an explanation, tweeting out an article that clarified that in this context “burner” refers to something disposable or irrecoverable.
The dictionary’s Twitter account gained notoriety for consistently trolling members of the Trump administration. When senior counselor Kellyanne Conway used “alternative facts” to refer to false claims about Trump’s inauguration crowd size, the dictionary responded with: “Fact is now understood to refer to something with actual existence.”
Merriam-Webster was quick to correct Trump’s misuse or misspellings, such as “covfefe.” Kory Stamper – a former lexicographer at Merriam-Webster – told The Post in 2017 that people were turning to dictionaries to make sense of current events.
“What you’re seeing online with dictionaries is a remarkable trend – it’s not just the SAT vocabulary words they’re looking up. These users seem to be following news events at an incredibly detailed level,” Stamper noted.
Merriam-Webster did not promptly respond to a request for a comment
Last week on the podcast “Warrior Poet Society,” Cawthorn made some shocking claims about his congressional colleagues when asked if life in Washington was anything like Netflix’s hit series “House of Cards.”
Cawthorn sought to illustrate what he considered the “sexual perversion that occurs in Washington” by recounting how a colleague had invited him to an orgy.
He also addressed drug use, noting that some of those working to curb American addictions “did a key bump of cocaine.”
“I just told him he has lost my trust,” McCarthy reportedly said about Cawthorn, according to Politico. “He needs to earn back my confidence.” McCarthy continued, noting that several members are very unhappy with Cawthorn’s actions.
At the meeting, McCarthy reported that Cawthorn had acknowledged some of his claims on the podcast were “exaggerated,” Axios reported.
“During our interview, he claims he saw people doing cocaine. When I ask him what happened, he tells me he thought maybe a staffer might have been in a parking garage from 100 yards away,” McCarthy said.
On Wednesday, neither “key” nor “bump” was selected as the dictionary’s word of the day. According to their definition, these terms have yet to gain widespread usage.
Instead, the honors were bestowed upon a more established word
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