lexicon
Word Premier League
Deepti

With cricket fever in the air, it’s just the right time to pitch a few items from cricket slang. An agricultural shot is a vigorous but unskilled swipe at the ball by a batsman and balls that bounce up close to the batsman’s head are termed ‘chin music’! And, the IPL would be called ‘pajama cricket’ as it is played in coloured clothing rather than the traditional whites.

So many foul words have become a part of the lexicon of daily life that at times, one is amazed at the threshold of tolerance of the listener. Words define a person and must be crafted with care. An incident narrated by Larry King, the interviewer of celebrities proves the point. In 1961, King accompanied Martin Luther King to a hotel in Florida. Even though Martin Luther had a reservation, he was denied a room in the hotel. So, he sat down in the porch in front of the hotel, creating an unpleasant situation. The manager walked up to him and asked him, "What do you want?" Very simply and softly, Martin Luther King replied, "My dignity".

The hype around cricket makes one wonder about the word ‘hype’. The word is used as a noun or a verb to refer to anything that is too extravagant as in ‘The hero depends upon media hype for the success of his films’. It may refer to publicity or an excessive reaction as in ‘She was hyped up before the exam’. The origins of ‘hype’ could be from the slang for hypodermic or the US slang ‘hype’ that means ‘cheat’ or a shortened form of ‘hyperbole’ meaning ‘exaggeration’.

With collective nouns, a speaker needs to be extra-cautious. Words like government, crew, audience and committee can be used as both singular and plural depending on whether the emphasis is on the members as a group or on the separate individuals who make up the group. For instance, both these sentences are correct: ‘A group of children were playing on the see-saw’ and ‘The education of children is a serious matter’.