If you have a bittersweet longing for something absent in your life, or you have experienced something once, loved and lost, and may never experience it again and are left with feelings of love, happiness, sadness, hope, emptiness and desire바카라and if you speak Portuguese바카라you would say you are feeling saudade. It is the 바카라pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy바카라. Alas, there is no equivalent for it in English. As there is none for the Russian word toska, which in Vladimir Nabokov바카라s description is: 바카라At its deepest and most painful, is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.바카라
There are gems like these in Shashi Tharoor바카라s latest 바카라verbal callisthenics바카라, the only kind of exercise he says he can do, A Wonderland of Words. The book has 101 short essays on words, written for the Dubai-based newspaper Khaleej Times as a column, divided over 13 sections like 바카라Spelling Bugs바카라, 바카라Linguistic Registers바카라, 바카라Lexicon Evolution바카라, 바카라Beer and Skittles바카라, 바카라Master of Mirth바카라 and so on. The muscular book of over 400 pages is so addictive that you will reluctantly put it down after breakfast only to pick it up again at lunch. You may at first think you can skip essays with the more prosaic titles like 바카라Nautical Jargon바카라 and 바카라Words From Aviation바카라, and go straight to the more alluring 바카라Literary Insults바카라 or 바카라Forbidden Words바카라. But then you would have missed learning the origin of 바카라pushing the envelope바카라 or 바카라pipe down바카라. For the first, here is what the book says: This refers to the 바카라flight envelope바카라, defined as the combination of speed, height, stress, and other aeronautical factors within the plane which can be safely operated. To go beyond that, or to push that envelope, is risky and dangerous in aviation, but in its figurative sense, it means 바카라to go beyond established limit바카라 or 바카라to pioneer바카라, and is used in admiration rather than admonition.
바카라Pipe down바카라 comes from shipping. A pipe was blown to assemble a ship바카라s crew for a difficult manoeuvre, and when it was finished the boatswain바카라s pipe was again sounded, with the command to 바카라pipe down바카라. Back to the essay 바카라Literary Insults바카라, it does live up to its name. 바카라Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-drunk-inheriting slave.바카라 No, this is not Captain Haddock after three bottles of rum, it바카라s from the quill of none other than the great bard. Kent goes on this diatribe against Oswald in Act 2 of King Lear, perhaps the best example of a literary insult.
But Tintin fans won바카라t be disappointed바카라there is a separate essay on Captain Haddock바카라s expletives. Tintin바카라s creator Hergé faced this interesting problem with his character, the pugnacious, rum-guzzling, irascible Captain Haddock. Hergé couldn바카라t make him say swear words as it was a children바카라s comic book. He came up with this idea of Haddock cursing in obscure and esoteric words such as anacoluthon, cercopithecus, ectomorph and pyrographer. Talking of obscure words and definitions, if you ever wondered what pleonasms, dysphemism, aptagrams, anaphora, bacronyms, eponyms, eggcorns, paraprosdokians, spoonerisms, kennings and zeugma are in the English language, this is the book to grab.
But I was intrigued that while on saudade and toska in the chapter 바카라Words That Don바카라t Exist In English바카라, there is no mention of the Czech word litost, which too doesn바카라t have an equivalent in English. Litost is a feeling of terrible sadness, a longing for nothing in particular, a despairing so strong it makes us tear up, it chokes us. 바카라It is a special sorrow, a state of torment caused by a sudden insight into one바카라s own miserable self,바카라 as Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera described it. Another such word is the Turkish hüzün, which novelist Orhan Pamuk puts like this: 바카라Hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter바카라s day.바카라 Then there is our own from the salubrious Konkan coast: susegad. It바카라s a relaxed, unhurried, low-strung attitude towards life, a knowing that however desperately we try, things will happen the way they do, like in susegad바카라s own country, Goa. Or are these words hidden elsewhere in the many pages of the book?
Another miss in the 바카라Language of Elections바카라 is the Indian invention: anti-incumbency. The term is not used for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, for Jair Bolsonaro or Rishi Sunak, but only for a hapless Manmohan Singh, Jagan Reddy, K Chandrashekhar Rao, Basavaraj Bommai or Ashok Gehlot, which means the fact that a politician has governed (or misgoverned) a state or the country for a full term goes against his or her getting elected again. But these are just some quibbles, the book is great fun, full of surprises and insights. Let me leave you with a few lines from the delightful chapter on puns. 바카라When she saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she바카라d dye. But then it grew on her.바카라 And 바카라Those who get too big for their pants will be totally exposed in the end.바카라
