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Witerati:Plunder on the ‘prurient’ express
Even as Tharoor kicked into action a rhyme a dozen with Queen’s English, the Queen herself sparked scares of another kind of kicking action — kicking the bucket.
For better or for rehearse, Tharoorsaurus triggered Tweeple to dive for dictionaries again by letting loose three lesser-known linguistic gems on Twitterverse. Somewhat in a similar spirit as the unleashing of three-plus penalty shootouts by Russia on Spain.
Just when Tweeple thought they were being treated to an interlude in their tutoring on Queen’s English thanks to Twitter’s Stephanian grammarian, their predicament resembling that of Lionel Messi – for whom every pause punctuating France’s goals could’ve been construed as a relief cause – Shashi Tharoor kicked into action again with thrice his vigour ‘n’ verve in bettering Tweeple’s language learning curve.
Much ado about words ‘parturient’
Tweeple being thrice blessed by Shashisms could squarely be blamed on a semantics puzzle called “prurient”. It was in rising to fellow Twitterati’s challenge of conjuring rhyming cousins of “prurient” that Tharoor blessed Tweeple with triple enlightenment encased in expressions three — parturient, esurient, scripturient.
Even as Tharoor kicked into action a rhyme a dozen with Queen’s English, the Queen herself sparked scares of another kind of kicking action — kicking the bucket.
While Tharoor’s tutorials on Twitter spelt that Queen’s English was far from dead, the British top brass bestirring and bustling hither-thither conducting covert rehearsals of an anticipated royal funeral fuelled “grave” speculations suspecting the Queen herself was far from alive and kicking.
The “ill” timing of the Queen’s indisposition, around when Tharoor had merrily cornered centre stage disseminating lessons in Queen’s English, bore uncanny resemblance to distractionary dispositions of gaming galas of the grand slam kind, a la Wimbledon, that played spoilsport by grabbing away attention of many a global eyeball fixated on football.
That secret funeral rehearsal operations codenamed ‘London Bridge’ and ‘Castle Dove’ were sparked by scares of an ailing head of monarchy, made it a season pregnant with rumour anarchy. Thankfully, it was not the Queen who died but these very rumours riding every Storm, Kick and Quarry.
If translated in terms of Tharoorsaurus, the season spelt a curious case of rumour mills looking parturient.
As scripturient as Shashisms get
Tharoor got a taste of his own medicine when his tutorial triggered a trolling storm. The parliamentarian-cum-unofficial grammarian saw plenty dread over the dead —not just having his tutorials imperilled by diversionary tidings of a Queen feared near dead, but also being haunted by a ghost of a trial looming on his head over a wife gone dead.
The Tharoorsaurus turning thrice generous tickled trolls to target him a rhyme a dozen: “Shashi Tharoor will go to jail, he will not get any bail; he is just big …. whale; Hail Hail Hail.”
A curious case of Shashisms schooling Tweeple to turn ‘scripturient’.
The Importance of Being Esurient
It was not only Tweeple who were at the receiving end of Queen’s English courtesy Tharoor tutorials, but Queen’s English was also at the receiving end — of that smartphone pain called autocorrect. How exasperating errors emanating from autocorrect can leave a blunder ‘n’ plunder trail is to be judged from the fact that even the self-anointed custodian of Stephanian English couldn’t make their head or tail. Tweeple tasted Tharoor’s taunt about predictive text thus, “Autocorrect makes me say things I didn’t Nintendo.”
As we, too, are tempted to turn scripturient thanks to Tharoor’s tutorial, it’s a curious case of being esurient for coining our own Shashisms ebullient:
“Autocorrect is a lexicological monstrosity with a decided disposition towards maliciously misjudging and misinterpreting meanings of spellings that threatens to wreak horrendous and horrific havoc on ardent or assiduous articulations aboard smartphones!”
(The author can be contacted at chetnabanerjee@gmail.com)
Views expressed are personal
