The silent b in "crumb"

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]The funniest aspect of the story this evening about Trump is not the insult.

[00:00:06]Political nicknames are as old as politics. Trump has some memorable ones.

[00:00:11]Crooked Hillary worked because it reinforced an existing narrative. Sleepy Joe has a certain rhythm. Little Marco has schoolyard politics elevated to presidential campaigning, but Democrat The President of the United States appears genuinely delighted by two discoveries. First is that the word dumb contains a silent B and secondly that he's found a way of removing removing it.

[00:00:36]>> [snorts] >> Hoovering it up. One is reminded of a pupil bursting into class having discovered that night begins with a K.

[00:00:42]What makes the episode amusing is Trump's evident pride in the linguistic breakthrough not merely once at a rally, not merely twice. He keeps returning to it as though he's cracked the Rosetta Stone.

[00:00:55]Most people, he says, don't know dumb ends in B. Most people do know. Most people learn this around the same time they encountered lamb, thumb, and comb.

[00:01:06]Yet, there is something oddly endearing about Trump's habit of sharing every new fact he discovers with the world.

[00:01:13]Political analyst Drew Savicki perhaps put it best when he observed that it's not all that it's always funny when Trump learns something new and immediately wants to share it with the class. The silent B is one of the great curiosities of English. We preserve letters long after they have ceased to perform any useful work.

[00:01:35]English spelling resembles a stately home. Rooms are added over centuries.

[00:01:39]Corridors lead nowhere, and occasionally one finds a door opening onto a brick wall. And Trump has now entered that stately home and announced with great excitement that he's discovered a cupboard.

[00:01:53]If he wishes to continue his educational journey, there are many other silent B words awaiting for him. Num, crum, lamb, tomb, womb, bomb, climb, limb, jam, plum, rum, succumb, a plum, honeycomb, catacomb, bread crumb and tomb. One can imagine his future rallies. Folks, nobody knew this. Nobody knew co ends in B.

[00:02:24]Incredible word, great word. Or perhaps they call me a bombastic president. Did you know bomb has a silent B? Many people are saying this. The possibilities are endless. The permutations are endless. There's also something >> [snorts] >> unintentionally poetic about the list.

[00:02:43]Politics is full of people who climb, succumb, uh entomb their careers, lose all their plum, and leave only bread crumbs behind. One could almost construct an entire presidential address from silent B words. My fellow Americans, some politicians climb, some succumb, some lose their plum, some are entombed by history. We shall outclimb them all. And as for the finest entry in the collection, I confess a certain affectation for interlim.

[00:03:17]It sounds less like a dictionary word and more like an obscure academic conference paper, the interlimbed dynamic dynamics of late classical athletic culture. One suspects that the great classicist and historian, Sir Kenneth Dover of What was it now? I think he I think he was at the same college as Ted um Mhm.

[00:03:39]Ted uh Ed.

[00:03:42]Oh, what What's the name of the British politician, the one trying to become a prime minister um with a brother? Anyway, Ed and Dave um anyway, I I I I he was there I think. I think I remember meeting him in the corner. I think I think that I think that's it.

[00:03:59]I can't remember the name of the college now. It begins with a C I think. Anyway, Kenneth Dover was there.

[00:04:05]And he might have preferred the word intercrural referring to contact between the thighs. Greek scholarship has never lacked precision. The ancients could classify human behavior with a thoroughness that would impress even a modern tax inspector. Still interlimb um might have been used. You could imagine Kenneth Dover um dotting his paragraphs with interlimbed youth. And interlimb has a pleasing absurdity. It sounds exactly the sort of word that Trump might discover next week and then explain repeatedly to an increasingly bewildered audience. They were interlimbed.

[00:04:45]And that is perhaps the real lesson here. Trump's political genius has never rested upon eloquence in any classical sense. He is not Pericles, a Churchill, or even a Reagan.

[00:04:57]His gift lies elsewhere. He has the rare ability to become fascinated by something utterly trivial and pursue um pursue pursue as a sort of >> [snorts] >> lectures on it. Try to persuade millions of people to talk about it. This week it is the silent B. Tomorrow he will discover that Q contains four letters doing almost no work whatsoever. At which point the English language should prepare itself for another presidential master class.