Palace to Urban Dictionary: Duterte means ‘honest, incorruptible, transparent’

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang isn’t buying Urban Dictionary’s definition to the word “Duterte” as a “scam, traitor, fake,” and “of low quality,” fielding its own description of the President’s surname.

For presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo, “Duterte” means “honest, incorruptible, politically-willed person, courageous, selfless, honest, transparent and all good things that come to… and other synonymous terms.”

“Well if that dictionary definition refers to the President, then we have our own definition of the man which is exactly the opposite of what that dictionary means,” Panelo said in a Palace briefing Tuesday.

Urban Dictionary is a crowdsourced online dictionary meant to give definition to various slang words. It recently released a meaning of “Duterte” after a netizen submitted the word, which Urban Dictionary now classifies as a verb, an adjective, and a noun.

READ: Urban Dictionary described Duterte in the most savage way

duterte: v. to scam, trick, con, or use unscrupulous means to a… https://t.co/nyKIkmcuEQ pic.twitter.com/GpEr1mQnTu

— Urban Dictionary (@urbandictionary) August 18, 2019

The Palace official then surmised that an “anti-Duterte” could be behind the given definition of “Duterte” in Urban Dictionary even if he refused to acknowledge at this point that the word in the online dictionary refers to the President or the First Family’s name.

“At this stage, we’re only speculating kasi meron nga akong nakitang wine Duterte eh. Diba? So hindi natin alam,” he said. /kga