Definition: noun 1 : a fencer’s quick return thrust following a parry 2 : a retaliatory verbal sally : retort 3 : a retaliatory maneuver or measure

Quotation: “Barack Obama told The Reno Gazette-Journal that ‘Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.’ That put-down of former President Clinton caused his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to zing Obama in debate a week later for the Democratic political sin of, as she put it, ‘admiring Ronald Reagan.’
“In his riposte, Obama said, ‘What I said was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests.’ (In his curious ‘was is,’ Obama’s juxtaposition of both past and present tenses of the verb ‘to be’ may have been a subtle, implicit reminder of the former president’s unforgettable ‘it depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.’ Or the eloquent candidate may have simply misspoken.)”
- from The New York Times On Language column by William Safire (one of my faves).