Epicaricacy: Shashi Tharoor's word of the day is tongue-in-cheek response to ex-Australia cricketers

Shashi Tharoor shared the word epicaricacy along with an image of former cricketers who had predicted India’s defeat.

On a day when the country was elated after the historic win by the Indian team over Australia in the Test series, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor shared his word of the day on Twitter to respond to former players from Down Under. Tharoor shared the word epicaricacy along with an image of former cricketers who had predicted India’s defeat.

"Epicaricacy is taking pleasure (usually malicious) in the misfortunes of others,” explained Shashi Tharoor. (HT Photo)

“#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”?! #IndvsAus,” Tharoor tweeted. He also shared a graphic of four former Australian cricketers Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting, Brad Haddin and Mark Waugh and former English cricketer Michael Vaughan along with the text of what they said about how India would not win the Test match series against Australia.

Tharoor also didn’t spare the explanation of his word-of-the-day to his followers. In a response to his initial tweet, he wrote “epicaricacy is taking pleasure (usually malicious) in the misfortunes of others,” explaining the word.

Even as Twitter was abuzz with reactions with wishes pouring in from all corners for Team India, this was not the tweet from Tharoor on the topic. A few minutes later, he shared another similar graphic of the same former Australian players. The graphic showed former Australian captain Clarke with the quote “India can celebrate for a year if they can beat Australia without Virat [Kohli].” Tharoor replied to this saying “Yes, Michael Clarke is right -- let's celebrate for a year... starting with hammering the English from next month!”

The Congress leader is known for often amusing and entertaining his Twitter followers with interesting words such as the one that he shared on Tuesday. However, it was not the first time Tharoor used the word epicaricacy. Earlier in 2018, in a much troubling time for him personally, he used the word to announce that he would be staying off Twitter for a while because of public reactions about the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar.