Trump and trumpery

The word trump has begun to creep into daily news and conversation. Let's not help it along.

That is, trump as a transitive verb meaning “override”; not trump meaning “foil or thwart .... esp. with an unexpected move at the last minute or by means of a previously secret resource” (Oxford Canadian Dictionary). I prefer the latter, but Merriam-Webster has already accepted the former.

Maybe someone will produce some beautiful writing in which this new sense of trump appears, but in the meantime it’s gone on my list of space-saving newspaper verbs to avoid, which includes oust, opt, rid, bid and nab. A writer pens a book instead of writing it, then inks the contract instead of signing it, and so on. It's enough to irk a person.