Actions and strategies done by or in the manner of Karl Rove should be referred to as Rovean. The man has silent e at the end of his name, and all the examples I could think of (Lockean, Humean, Shakespearean) simply use the rule of tacking an -an to the end to create an adjectival form. You’d only change it to an -ian if is name ended in -i or a consonant.
Alas, a search on Google gives me 7,810 hits for Rovean, 387,000 for Rovian.
Criminy sakes, the man has even corrupted English grammar …
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Wow. Am I so pedantic that nobody’s willing to comment on this? 🙂
Well, Webster’s does list “Shakespearian” as a variant of “Shakespearean.” Google returns 523,000 pages for the former as opposed to 3,660,000 for the latter, but it does set a precedent. I suspect that this is something you’re just going to have to get used to.
Or maybe the entire Rovean repertoire will be so discredited by this election debacle that we’ll never have need for an adjectival form of that toad’s name again.
Yeah, I’m a cockeyed optimist.
Doubtful, look what it took to get rid of Wormtongue. =P