As online exchanges go, this one was very civilized indeed – the two sides were respectful and polite to each other and it hardly seemed like a Twitter conversation! So, what happened was, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared the link to a piece written by bestselling author Chetan Bhagat along with some appreciative comments. Bhagat seemed flattered but requested that Tharoor should make his comments in his with his trademark verbosity; using difficult words as he is wont to. Here’s what happened:
Tharoor referred to a recent article by Bhagat as a ‘superb piece’; simple and direct.
Please use big words, sir --- this was the essence of Bhagat’s reply.
He reexpressed basically the same thoughts; however, this tweet appeared to have been framed after the swallowing of a thesaurus.
So there we had another quintessential Tharoor moment; or Tharoorism as the tweeple now refer to it.
Some were reminded of this.
Most didn’t understand the many big words used.
They would have found that sesquipedalian means long-winded or making use of big words. Rodomontade means boastful or self-important behaviour.
So, unembellished means plain; without decoration or embellishment. And tortuous means twisted and roundabout, and convolution means difficulty or needless complication.
Ostentation means pretension or unnecessary /fake flashiness (which the tweet basically is).
Perspicacity means sound judgement or insight and limpid means clear see-through.
This Twitter user points out that Chetan Bhagat writes simple books and his readers would find it difficult to understand Tharoor.
They would react like this.
This Twitter user seems to be in competition with Tharoor – making much less grammatical sense, however.
What language is this?
They created their own sesquipedalian tweets.
Why make people feel uninformed and ignorant?
Even Google had difficulty translating Shashi Tharoor's overly garrulous tweet.
Any interpreter of Shashi Tharoor’s words would have a very tough job. And the idea to change the name to Shashi Thesauras is not a bad one – Chetan Bhagat would probably agree.
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