Trending: ‘defund’

Defund has been spiking in lookups on June 8th, 2020 (and on the days preceding), as calls increased to apply this transitive verb to the budgets of police departments.

The vast majority of police arrests are for crimes ranging from drug offenses to failure to pay traffic fines—and supporters of the defund movement argue that communities would be better off if these issues were tackled by other kinds of civil servants, like counselors and social workers.
— Gabrielle Bruney, Esquire, 8 Jun. 2020

We define defund as “to withdraw funding from.” A recent addition to English, defund has only been in use since the middle of the 20th century; fund has been used as a verb since the middle of the 18th.

In an effort to "defund" these liberal operations, Sen. Denton, (with the assistance of ALL's Judie Brown) formulated the Adolescent Family Life Bill which creates locally based organizations to influence chastity among teenagers or to encourage pregnant women to carry their pregnancies to term and put the child up for adoption.
— Off Our Backs, 31 Dec. 1981