Timepass for chilling

Each part of the world has contributed words to English language from their repository of their own languages. Indian contribution includes use of some English words differently even if they do not yet find a place in the dictionaries like bandh, cummerbund etc have.

India Real Time of the Wall Street Journal has this interesting but small list of words used in India.

Read it here. It does not include words like backside for back of, for instance, saying 'backside of the building inside of back of building'. Backside is mostly to be used for a person's buttocks.

Words from Chicago

Dictionaries, both printed and online, provide the etymology of words. They are often interesting.

Here is a list of 40 words which originated in Chicago and remain in use.

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2010/Top-40-Chicago-Words-Our-Contributions-to-the-English-Language/

Generally the etymology mentions the language from where it emerged, for instance, French, Latin etc. Here, it is location specific, as close to as a city.

Shooting from the hat

The Indian Express and Financial Express quoted a go-by-rule official, Ashok Khema (IAS, Haryana, often transferred for doing his duty) as saying there are honest politicians and he can name them off the hat. That is a mixed up idiom.

Probably he intended to say off the cuff, meaning straight away, without much effort, impromptu, extemporaneously. But yes, there is something one does by pulling something out of the hat, as if magically. Spring a surprise, as it were.

We may as well recall another expression: shooting from the hip when something is said quickly, instantaneously, as if you are pulling the gun from the holster at the hip and shoot, quickly. 

Brits to shed jargon in official communications

I recall an IAS officer telling me that a road would be 'safe-staged' before traffic was allowed on it. What he meant was that once all tests were done, and the road was declared safe for use, it would be opened to public.

Probably, 'safe-staged' saved words, but to many, it meant  nothing, being new. Fortunately, it did not gain currency.

The civil service of all countries have their own jargon which is aimed more at confusing than providing clarity. Hence, the British Government, it seems, according to a blog, decided to ask its officials to cease and desist from using jargon.

My friend Kiran Thakur, who runs a blog http://mediasceneindia.blogspot.in/ drew attention to the helpful British decision publicized by the newspaper, The Independent, of UK.

Read about it here and have fun.

If you feel up to it, please let us know of the jargon you find in Indian media.

'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.