Where does covfefe come from?

On May 31, 2017, President Donald Trump, already well-known for his tweeting and colorful vocabulary, tweeted: “Despite the negative press covfefe.” The random-seeming tweet remained untouched and unexplained for more than six hours, during which the internet exploded in speculation, largely in the form of puns, jokes, and made-up definitions for this non-word.

The hashtag “#covfefe” was, at the time, the number-one trending hashtag in the world, liked more than 162,000 times and retweeted more than 127,000 times in those six hours. It garnered such attention that it became a Twitter Moment, featuring several highly shared and retweeted memes and jokes about the word and its possible meaning(s).

The original tweet was deleted later on May 31, but Trump seemed to become aware of his gaffe and tweeted: “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’??? Enjoy!” In an attempt to save face later in the day, press secretary Sean Spicer stated, “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.”

Some conspiracy theorists concluded that the tweet was a message written partially in Arabic and that covfefe could be translated to “I will stand up.” This was immediately debunked by Arabic scholars. Still others have attempted to tie the word to both Samoan and Yiddish origins, all of which have been disproven.

As of April, 2018, covfefe/”#covfefe” is still being regularly used on Twitter as an ironic nonsense word.

JG: My own opinion is that Trump is a rather very dumb person. When he does not what to say, he will invent one that no human being has ever heard of before.

It is not the first one. He also 'invented' foistered.

Gawd! I hope we can get rid of him on November 3rd, 2020.