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One of the most historically significant elections of our lifetime is coming up on November 8 in the US. Unfortunately, each presidential election seems longer and more absurd than the last, resulting in trivialized campaigns riddled with half-truths and lies, and a bitterly divided electorate. Developing new shorthand for all kinds of absurdities seems to […]

New words are constantly entering a language. Especially if that language is English (The Oxford English Dictionary adds approximately 1000 words each year). Words can be added by way of catastrophic wars, technological inventions, or simple and persistent mispronunciation. Quite often, the new words which are added are “authorisms” – which Paul Dickson defines as […]

Swearing is mostly impolite, sometimes necessary and rarely fun. But it is an indispensable part of human existence. Stubbed your toe against the chair at night? Got a ridiculously unreasonable colleague? Stuck in traffic while on the way to an exam? Favourite character dies in the cliffhanger? Letting your favourite rude words rip is a […]

Recently, the Tamil word ‘aiyoh’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. It is unclear who might want to look up ‘aiyoh’ in an English dictionary. But anyway, the question is: how can a dictionary define exclamations like these? Here are a few from India and around the world that are hard to explain. Take […]

If I were to ask you to say some made-up English words, what would be the first one you’d think of? The first that came to my mind was ‘Google’. But it’s more adapted than made-up. Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin took an existing word, googol, and changed the spelling. Today, when we […]

Hit the average litterateur with the word autumn, and instead of stars, John Keats’ lines will swim before his or her eyes. And certainly, autumn is a “season of mists”, of “mellow fruitfulness”, of the “maturing sun” and other warm and romantic fantasies. But it is also a season of cooler air, longer nights and […]

Some years ago, a friend and I were in a shop that sold kitchenware in a suburban Mumbai market. The store, run by a second-generation trader, was tiny and crammed, as it had always been, but over the years some of the traditional steel bartan had given way to imported items, such as casseroles and […]

Namaste! For starters, here’s a lesson in how not to say that word: Mispronouncing a foreign word should not be confused with saying it with a different accent. Everybody has some accent, and those of us who lack the talent of Meryl Streep or Jon B. Higgins cannot lose our accent completely. But anyone can […]

359 million of us may speak English but accents still distinguish us – just like the brand of our watch or sunglasses, the degree we hold, or the clothes we wear. When we travel, accents can seem like verbal passports – they announce who we are and where we’re from. They also help us build […]

As I write this Word Nerd piece, August is nearly at an end, and so is the rainy season. In the Indian subcontinent, the rainy season is also known as monsoon, a word which originates from the Arabic ‘mausim’. Mausim means that which comes around once a year. This could be a festival or a […]