'Covfefe': Trump invents new word and melts internet
- Published
Donald Trump made a typo on Twitter and the internet had a lot of fun with it
One word was close to breaking the internet on Wednesday morning: "covfefe".
It was an apparent typo in a tweet by US President Donald Trump, and internet users have been mocking him mercilessly.
"Despite the constant negative press covfefe," he tweeted just after midnight, Washington time.
And he then appeared to have gone to bed, without finishing his thought or correcting his mistake.
It took six hours before he acknowledged it with a good-humoured response, and by that time a lot of people had had a lot of fun.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked by journalists at Wednesday's daily briefing what the tweet meant.
Mr Spicer provoked incredulity from the assembled media as he replied: "The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant."
Although it seems likely the word Mr Trump was reaching for was "coverage", social media users have been trying to guess other alternatives or motivations.
Others deliberated on the pronunciation, and wondered why no aides had stepped in to alert him to the mistake.
Google Translate recognised the word as Samoan, though could offer no English translation. A BBC reader has written in to debunk any suggestion that the president is a secret Samoan speaker. Among many other reasons for this, the language does not even have a letter C.
You might also be interested in:
Cov-FEE-fee has been narrowly winning the online pronunciation poll
No time was wasted as some users put the word on a T-shirt, which they started to sell on eBay.
Someone also appears to have bought the domain name, covfefe.us.
US comedian Jimmy Kimmel was among the celebrities to join in
Some people made parodies related to films, such as this take on Arrival
And US game show Wheel of Fortune
Getting caught up in an explosion of memes, some social media users said they could not sleep, as everyone on the internet seemed to be trying to outdo each other with the best response.
And then Europe woke up, and it started all over again.
#Covfefe is currently a trending topic on Twitter across the world.
The news editor of Financial Times got involved in the UK
Meanwhile, Twitter accounts for Covfefe the Strong and the Wizard Covfefe, external appeared online on Wednesday, claiming to have been summoned by Mr Trump's puzzling word.
Philadelphia's police department also poked fun at how the term could be used.
And when President Trump reappeared on Twitter, six hours later, he deleted the mistake, but seemed to be enjoying the spectacle.
He asked followers to keep guessing, while giving nothing away.
Allow Twitter content?
This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read Twitter’s cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.
- Published31 May 2017
- Published31 May 2017
