'Grill' when a few question are asked?

Whenever investigating agencies - police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement - Bureau, question a person, the preferred word for a headline in the media is "grill", like predictably it would be after Naveen Jindal has a session with the CBI about the coal supplies and alleged bribes to a minister.

"Grill" is to broil on a toaster, inflict torture or question intensely. It is a transitive verb which implies some action which makes the person being questioned at leas wince at the physical pain.

Is use of such a verb appropriate when it comes to big-shots being asked questions? These agencies are known to be polite to this class of people, that is, the politicians. They are known to have acted at the behest of this class of people. Is it to indicate that they have done something more than that the spokespersons tell the media of the grilling when they asked a few question?

Is grill a word like a police and judicial custody is made to appear to be a punishment in themselves?

Any views? Please post a comment.

Upliftment?!

One of the Indianisms is 'upliftment'.

Newspapers don't think twice when they report a minister speaking about improving the status of the poor, the socially deprived. The idea is uplifting, but not the word.

No dictionary, printed or online, has it. Nearest they come to is uplift, a verb, adjective, and a noun. A face is uplifted, be uplifted with reference to the ground, and move someone up on the social scale. The last is where Indians use it, 'upliftment'.

Does it correct because it is used often? Then why has it not entered the dictionaries in decades and more of that usage?

Apparently is it used elsewhere, as in Jamaica. A comment Merriam-Webster online has this: " I have been searching for the word 'upliftment that is commonly used in Jamaica, but it does not appear in the Oxford Dictionary." Nor have I.

Advani 'mutinous'?

Is it right to describe Lal Krishna Advani's recent views and actions 'mutinous'?

But that adjective appears inappropriate in the Advani context because he has been, since the formation of Bharatiya Janata Party been a leader even if he did not hold a formal position. He has been the elder of the party.

Technically, he differed and quit from the several party fora which makes him a dissenter, if even a lonely one. Aleader does not rebel of mutiny; he only leads.

The Hindu, in its editorial on June 13 used the adjective. A mutinous person is one who is willfully disobedient. Here, he had objections and the adjective does not sit apt on him.

Whistleblower or leaker?

A 'whistleblower is a person who brings to light something illegal or dishonest done by an individual or an organisation. It is considered a honest thing to do.

Bradley Manning who downloaded all details of diplomatic communications to wiki-leaks was described as being one - then and now.

Now, Edward Snowdenn, who has brought to light the manner in which the United States was snooping on all electronic communications, via The Guardian, was labelled a whistleblower by the newspaper.

But not so the Associated Press, a news cooperative. It wants him to be identified as a 'leaker' or a 'source'. A memo by the AP's standards editor - who determines style of writing, said, it was part of their "general effort to avoid labels and instead describe behaviour". .

Read about it here on www.huffingtonpost.com. The news organisation, AP, is okay with other terms, like he "leaked, exposed, or revealed classified information".

Another piece on the huffingtonpost goes to the extent of saying that Snoden is neither a hero nor a traitor, but a criminal. Is that the reason a newsorganisation decide on calling a whistleblower a leaker?

What according to you does this nuanced change from whistleblower to other descriptions mean?

'Inadequate overhaul'

'Overhaul', as is commonly understood, is taking things apart and putting them together. It does not imply any half-measure.

The dictionaries have this meaning for overhaul: to dismantle in order to make repairs. As a verb, it is to take apart and then putting them together. Merriam-Webster has this: to repair, to renovate, remake, revise or renew thoroughly.

Those who don't bother about the nuances, overhaul suggests remaking or renewing thoroughly.

So this headline for an editorial (called 'leader' within the newspaper, as does The Economist) in The Hindu looked odd: Inadequate overhaul. But it was not, for what it referred to was inadequate response of the Archaeological Survey of India to the issue of preserving monuments.  The paper meant, what was being done was not enough. What was being done was not comprehensive enough.

It is a happy thing that we find something that sounds odd but is actually correct usage.

Eating words

English is quite a pun language; one can have fun because of the puns. But an entire headline which first startles and then explains is this on pix11.com:

Spelling Bee winner eats his winning word for the 1st time: K-n-a-i-d-e-l, knaidel

It all about how the US Spelling Bee winner, Arvind Mahankali, who spelt knaildel correctly and bagged  US30,000 and then ordered one in a restaurant since he had never eaten it ever, being a vegetarian. The restaurant had to make one for him.

He was not eating his word in the sense, he was not owning up to a mistake which is what the idiom means. He was eating the soup. The headline draws you to it, especially, if you had read Chidananda Rajghatta's dispatch about how the spelling was disputed. The venerable New York Times had written about it.

Mahankali was conceding his mistake, you'd think. Far from it; he was tasting it!

The idiom means, "if you eat your words, you accept publicly that you were wrong abut something you said", according to www.usingenglish.com and "to have to take back one's statements; to confess that one's predictions were wrong", according to idioms.thefreedictionary.com
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He was only eating the soup. By the way, there is a dispute - or lack of clarity - on whether soup is eaten or drunk.

Interestingly, the above piece was posted on Facebook by Chidananda Rajghatta.this blog had a post on his dispatch in The Times of India on the dispute, which if read now, would help understand the whole thing better.

Large English-speaking population, but shy of spelling

India too has a spelling contest is apparently not such a rage in India as it is in the United States where the 86th edition of the National Spelling Bee was held last week, and a student of Indian descent won the top honours.

Indian Americans have been winning it for the past six years.

Around 11 million apply to participate in the US while in India, 2,50,000 students between age nine and 14 did this year to participate in the contest run by HDFC since 2009.

An official who runs it was quoted by Wall Street Journal's India Real Time saying that Indian schools "don't consider spelling competitions as important academically and put a greater focus on other subjects".

"Exceptional" at science and mathematics, Indian students are "not as good at English" and their "vocabulary is not very developed and less importance is put on the understanding of English than other subjects".

But then, isn't India ahead of others in the business outsourcing business (BPO) and such I-T enabled services because it has the largest English-speaking population?

By the way, such contests are orthographical. Look up the dictionary for orthographic it is not often used here.