The tagline reads: Around the world in 101 essays. These essays are an ‘expanded and augmented’ version of Shashi Tharoor’s World of Words column in the Khaleej Times, wherein he parses the meaning of many an English word, a term, a concept, indeed of a fast-evolving language itself.
Stray thought: this is just the book you need if you want to know where terms like ‘orange marmalade’, ‘marsification’, ‘logomisia’, or even ‘ping’ come from.
The introduction is a delight, even if it does rather tend to run on, with an engaging attempt by Tharoor at sending himself, or rather his reputation as an inexhaustible wordsmith, up. Inexplicably though, he describes Scrabble at some length, perhaps labouring under the belief that most of us wouldn’t know much about the game. Later, equally inexplicably, he sees fit to explain inflation, and goes off into a cul-de-sac explaining shrinkflation, too.
These few instances of pontification aside, the rest of the book is a fun read, and definitely an informative one, telling us about the origin of many a word. In one instance, Tharoor tells us about the word ‘ixnay’; this reviewer for one, always thought the word had sprung fully formed from the fertile brain of Plum Wodehouse. He terms his siblings and himself obstreperous, says his father was his milver, avers he’s a logophile… all of which gets the reader quickly looking up the terms!
The flashlight is swung in a wide arc. Tharoor throws light on American English and Australian English, then Irish, French, German, Japanese contributions to the Queen’s language. He smiles in understanding, even admiration, at the Indianisms we all use. In an interesting chapter, he writes of the minefield that the usage of Ukraine-specific terms have become, pointing out how language and spelling can take on distinct political overtones; why we shouldn’t be saying ‘the Ukraine’, why it’s ‘Kyiv’ not ‘Kiev’, and the meaning of the letter ‘Z’ seen on Russian tanks and military vehicles.