Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

The year 2008 produced a new acronym: PUMA. Grant explains how PUMAs began prowling the political landscape.

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We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about ground game.

Another political term that we crossed paths with was PUMA.

PUMA is an acronym for Party Unity My Ass, which began as a Facebook group.

Members of that group were Democrats who were disaffected after Hillary Clinton failed to secure a sufficient number of delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Some of these disaffected Democrats formed groups and committees in order to try to bring the matter to a head-to-head smackdown vote at the national convention.

Other PUMAs, as they call themselves, switched allegiances completely and came out in favor of Republican candidate John McCain.

The PUMA umbrella name was widely embraced by the Republicans and was even seen as a false front for true Republicans masquerading as ex-Democrats in order to lure fence-sitting Clinton supporters over to McCain.

As the PUMA movement grew—its true size is not really known—the acronym was revisited and it began to be said that it stood for the much more politer Party Unity Means Action.

The PUMA organization became increasingly irrelevant when Hillary Clinton acknowledged Barack Obama would be the party's nominee.

We may have to wait another four years to see if the term is revived.

That's all about "PUMA." Next week we'll talk about the "hockey mom."