Floccinaucinihilipilification? What New Word Is Shashi Tharoor Teaching Us?

He is arguably one of the most erudite and articulate Indians on Twitter. At some point in his life, Shashi Tharoor must have swallowed a thesaurus; which would account for his habit of showing off displaying his not inconsiderable vocabulary. He has taught the nation words such as rodomontade, farrago and many more. Now he has come up with one more – this time quite unpronounceable.

Floccinaucinihilipilification

This is the new word that Shashi Tharoor has foisted upon an unsuspecting populace. I tried to pronounce it and failed. It means “the estimation of something as valueless” but mostly the word is used to demonstrate how many long and difficult words there are in the English language.

The context

Tharoor was plugging his new book – The Paradoxical Prime Minister which is currently available for preordering on Amazon. The title itself indicates that the book will be a sharp critique of the present government, its leader's selective silence, broken promises and tacit endorsement of the illiberal fringe.

Strangely the book already has reviews

The book is yet to be released by it already has 21 reviews on Amazon! The reviews appear to dovetail with personal political ideologies.

Whaaat!

Most people seemed to have this reaction to the incomprehensible and unfamiliar word.

Just to be clear

In case people were wondering how the mysterious word is pronounced, Tharoor made this helpful 10 second clip to give voice to the nearly-impossible-to-pronounce word. “Finally after a hundred try I got it rightly pronounced,” said one tweet in reply.

Tharoor has many fans

Some have little time for Tharoor’s use of unnecessarily obscure words and use their Twitter interactions mainly to demand explanations for the Sunanda Pushkar case. Others seem to enjoy his verbosity

One-upmanship?

Popular YouTuber and journalist Akash Banerjee decided to top floccinaucinihilipilification with pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. Apparently this is the longest word in the English language. It refers to some sort of lung disease caused by silica dust. His tweet made no sense but at least he educated the world!

Inadequacy!

Shashi Tharoor's felicity with the English language can often make others feel a little inadequate; as seems to be the case in this tweet.

Who asks whom!

This tweet wonders whether Tharoor asks Siri about the meaning of words or whether it’s the other way around. Others felt that Tharoor is the person AI companies secretly hope to build an assistant for.

While on the subject of difficult words

This twitter user used the word Tharoorasaurus – to describe his predilection for weighty, unusual words. We are left wondering about the next Tharoorism – and when it will next be unleashed upon us.

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