Least Favorite Word of 2004

I would like to formally announce my nomination for the most annoying word of 2004:

“Pundit”

I think it came into vogue because of one of those quasi-famous blogs I never read. And now everybody seems to be calling their blog Pundit-this and Pundit-that, and it’s just annoying. And it seems to have entered popular use just in general as well. And that’s too bad.

Actually, the one neat thing I did just learn because of all this… it turns out that “pundit” is actually an alternate spelling of the Sanskrit word “pandit”. A pandit is a Brahman scholar or learned man. It’s used as a title of respect. In case your Hinduism is a little rusty, the Brahmans are the priest caste in traditional Hindu society.

I’m guessing this word entered our language thanks to the English occupation of India. There’s another word I know of that’s said to have entered English that way too, but that word is much funnier:

“Choad”


- END -

ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)

This entry was written by Tim Boucher, posted on October 20, 2004 at 1:02 am.

permalink.

RSS feed for this post.

Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

Public Domain Where Applicable, Copy Left Where Not, Universal Free Realms Everyware Else for 2009 and for forever.the timboucher experience. No rights reserved.