'Floccinaucinihilipilification': Shashi Tharoor introduces new word to Twitterati while promoting latest book

New Delhi: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday once again introduced Twitterati and the literati to a difficult, near-unpronounceable word, describing his new book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification”.

According to the Oxford dictionary, the word is a noun and means “the action or habit of estimating something as worthless”.

Discussing the usage of the word, the dictionary adds, “Floccinaucinihilipilification is one of a number of very long words that occur very rarely in genuine use.”

My new book, THE PARADOXICAL PRIME MINISTER, is more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification. Pre-order it to find out why!https://t.co/yHuCh2GZDM

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 10, 2018

The book itself was relegated to the background as the word got Twitterati talking. “I get a feeling of floccinaucinihilipilification when I don’t know the meaning of floccinaucinihilipilification,” tweeted one of Tharoor’s followers. “What my English teachers taught was a lie. Won’t order it as I cannot take out the dictionary everytime,” said another person in reply to Tharoor’s tweet. After the slew of responses, Tharoor also tweeted a short video to help his followers understand the word:

I'm sorry if one of my tweets y'day gave rise to an epidemic of hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia!
[Don't bother looking it up: it's just a word describing a fear of long words].
But #TheParadoxicalPrimeMinister contains no words longer than Paradoxical! https://t.co/8h0zkcHnb2

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 11, 2018

The book is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

According to the description of the book on Amazon, “Shashi Tharoor has stitched together a compelling portrait of this paradoxical figure (Narendra Modi).

“Never before has there been such a superbly written and devastatingly accurate account of the most controversial prime minister India has ever had,” it said.

Tharoor’s love for the language and propensity for little heard and little-used words is well known.

In May 2017, the MP from Thiruvananthapuram and author of 17 books got netizens talking when he described the coverage of the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar by a news channel as an “Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalist”.

In December 2017, he used the word ‘rodomontade’ , meaning boastful or inflated talk or behaviour. “I choose my words because they are the best ones for the idea I want to convey, not the most obscure or rodomontade ones!” he tweeted.

And in February, he introduced ’troglodytes’ to the Twitter world in a response to Vinay Katiyar’s comment on the Taj Mahal.

“We can’t let these troglodytes destroy our country & everything beautiful in it,” he tweeted.