Lexicon
Handle your words with TLC
Deepti

THE generation gap gets wider if generations can’t understand one another’s words. So, use these ‘youth words’ and come closer to your youngsters: ‘bling’ refers to any expensive or ostentatious object or accessory, ‘chillin’ is relaxing with friends, a ‘hottie’ is an object of affection, and ‘wassup’ means ‘what’s going on?’ India is not far behind, the list of the top 10 global youth speak words includes ‘fundoo’ from India, meaning ‘cool’.

Loan words in English are now an acknowledged feature that demonstrates the global quality of the language. A truly colourful history comes with the loan word ‘dabbawallah’. This word shot to fame and reached the lexicon after the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. During a visit to Mumbai in 2003, the Prince had met the dabbawallahs and so he invited them to his wedding. This efficient group of people remains true to its etymology by fetching fresh food at lunchtime from the homes of around 1,75,000 working people in a day. After receiving a six-sigma rating and attention from management scholars internationally, ‘dabbawallah’ has also taken on the connotation of smooth efficiency.

An existing word often gets a makeover from a creative user. The word ‘trivial’ is one such instance. In ancient times when Latin ruled the roost in the West, this word was used for any subject ‘belonging to the trivium’ of the so-called ‘lower’ division of the liberal arts comprising rhetoric, logic and grammar. ‘Trivium’ came from the Latin ‘trivialis’ or ‘place where three roads meet’. Since these subjects were considered to be low in significance, the sense of ‘commonplace’ was picked up by Shakespeare and used in Henry VI, thus giving a new avatar ‘of little account’ to the word.

The use of words in figurative ways adds variety, enriching the language. Two kinds of figurative use that are common are the metaphor and the simile. When we say ‘my love is like a red rose’, this is a simile as it uses a term of comparison but ‘my love is a red rose’ is a metaphor as it does not.