In an aside during SNL‘s “Weekend Update” segment, Seth Meyers chastised the New Oxford American Dictionary for selecting Sarah Palin‘s literary “fender-bender” refudiate as the 2010 Word of the Year. The stern lecture, titled “Come on, Dictionary,” had the exasperated fake news host urging the Oxford University Press not to celebrate Palin’s accidental mash-up and offering evidence as to why the Alaskan politician is no William Shakespeare.

One musn’t underestimate the power Sarah Palin wields. Her massive influence has touched a lot of spheres of American life, and she’s now making her mark on an unlikely one—lexicography. First her term ‘hockey mom’ broke into the New Oxford American Dictionary. Now her portmanteau ‘refudiate’ has been declared by that same dictionary as the 2010 Word of the Year.

So it’s come to this.

The New Oxford American Dictionary recently revealed which words and phrases are being added to its latest edition. And, as Vanity Fair‘s Juli Weiner notes, “the group reads like a list of Twitter trending topics.”

On Monday, we reported that the New Oxford American Dictionary had named “teabagger” a runner-up for its “Word of the Year.” Notably missing from Oxford’s definition was any mention of the term’s other meaning. We contacted Oxford University Press to find out why, and the answer is sure to either please, or disappoint, the MSNBC anchors who put “teabagger” on America’s lips.

As we noted on Monday, “teabagger” was one of the runners-up for the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year. From the start, it threatened to get more buzz than the winner, the trendy/techy neologism “unfriend.” Enter: Keith Olbermann.

In a press release touting “unfriend” as the word of the year, the New Oxford American Dictionary may have unwittingly made a more controversial move than the New Oxford American Dictionary pretty much ever does. No, it wasn’t another cutesy tech neologism: they included “teabagger” as one of their Word of the Year finalists. Their definition after the jump — it doesn’t include some of the raunchier connotations.