For a brief moment, when Barack Obama at the White House correspondents' dinner wiped the proverbial floor with Donald Trump (actually, that wouldn't be a bad use for his hair), all felt right in the world. This came after a period when all felt horribly wrong: a billionaire, who looks like he's suffered a tanning accident and said he was "proud" to have uncovered the truth of Obama's birth certificate, appeared to be seriously considering running for the US presidency.

Trump-bashing is an easy sport (and one that's taken off - #donaldtrumpisabellend was trending on Twitter recently). He is overrich, a reality TV star and writes books called Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate and Life, and Trump: the Best Golf Advice I Ever Received. Almost all his book titles start with his name. All his hotels, apartment blocks and skyscrapers start with his name, too: Trump Plaza, Trump Tower, Trump Grande Ocean Resort and Residences. Trump trump trump - it makes me think of Nellie the Elephant. It makes me think of Donald Trump as Nellie the Elephant, which in many ways is a more reassuring thought than Trump as president. What would his Libya policy be? Turn it into a golf course?

The name Trump is a good one for branding, though - you can see why he wants to plaster it over everything. One syllable, sharp, confident, a winner. And the first meaning of the word that springs to mind is apt for a man who has written Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life: it's the trump card, the winning trick (the word stems from "triumph"). Another definition is equally apt: to trumpet, from the Old French trompe, meaning a tube-like wind instrument. I can imagine Trump playing the trumpet, leading a marching band around the streets of New York which he has bought, paved with gold and renamed West Trump Street, Trump Avenue and Trumpway.

But the third, lesser-known and underused definition of trump is by far the most interesting. Trump the verb means to fabricate or devise, and comes from the French tromper - to deceive. If a charge is trumped up, it is false and overblown.

A little bit like the great man's hair.