Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has once again come up with the ‘word of the day’ and there’s a political twist to it. Known for his penchant for rare and complex vocabulary, Tharoor dropped the word, ‘Allodoxaphobia’ and explained its meaning and usage to social media.
While he explained its meaning -- “an irrational fear of opinions” --- for its usage, he cited, “The BJP government in UP slaps sedition& UAPA cases on people because its leadership suffers from allodoxaphobia.(Greek: Allo=different, doxo=opinion,phobos=fear).”
It’s, however, not the first time that the leader has taken a jibe at the ruling BJP government with a new word that had people running to their dictionaries.
POGONOTROPHY
Earlier in July this year, Tharoor obliged a Twitter user by sharing one of his new words — pogonotrophy — that he learnt from his friend and economist Rathin Roy. According to Tharoor, the word means, ‘the cultivation of a beard’.
While citing an example of its usage, Tharoor said, “As in, the PM's pogonotrophy has been a pandemic preoccupation…”
Early this year and all throughout the pandemic, PM Modi was seen sporting a growing beard for the longest time. His new look had created a lot of speculations, one being that he was trying to woo the voters of Bengal ahead of the Assembly elections 2021 with a look that resembles the revered poet Rabindranath Tagore.
FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION
In another discovery of a new word, Tharoor had used a 29-letter word ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’ while introducing his new book ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister’ in 2018. No doubt, it had left social media in a tizzy.
Later, Tharoor explained that the new book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification”. According to the Oxford dictionary, the word is a noun and means, “the action or habit of estimating something as worthless”.
However, Tharoor’s wit is not only limited to jibe against PM Modi or the saffron party. Here are the other times when Tharoor taught social media a few other peculiar words.
RODOMONTADE
In 2017, Shashi Tharoor took to Twitter and justified his reasons for using difficult words. He said, “I choose my words because they are the best ones for the idea I want to convey, not the most obscure or rodomontade ones”.
According to the Oxford dictionary, the word means to “talk boastfully”.
EPICARYCACY
When India won the historic Gabba test series against Australia sending people in a shock, Tharoor took to Twitter and wrote ‘epicarycacy’.
“#WordIfTheDay: epicaricacy! I am not the gloating kind but there’s a special pleasure in reading these comments today... When everything else has been said, what remains but “wow”?!” he said.
Epicracy means deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others. The ‘word of the day’ was seen as a slap on the face of Australian cricketers and cricket experts who had predicted the win of Australia against India.
