Shashi Tharoor in 2017: When Congress MP turned Shakespeare, won our hearts with his brilliant vocabulary

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. (Source: PTI)

From the political unrest in Tamil Nadu, Yogi Adityanath’s elevation as the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh to Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma’s wedding in Italy and Bhaaubali: The Conclusion’s record-breaking box-office performance, 2017 will be remembered for a lot of reasons. One man who made stood out amid the baseless trolling and hilarious memes on social media was Shashi Tharoor. This year the Congress MP in his Shakespeare avatar introduced the Twitterati to a new set of words and his vocabulary was so impressive that one user even demanded his school fees back after being thrown off-guard by one of the words from the ‘Tharooraurus’. Here, we have a look at some of the not so ‘rodomontade’ words that Tharoor used in 2017.

When the Republic TV did an ‘expose’ on Sunanda Pushkar, the senior Congress leader roared like a lion, hitting back hard but in the process, dropped one of the most talked-about words of the year. “Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations&outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalst,” the Congress MP wrote in his tweet. Wonder how many people still know what exactly farrago means!

Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations&outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalst

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 8, 2017

This was followed by another act of brilliance by Shashi Tharoor. In July, he introduced us to a word for a person ‘who believes every claim or allegation on the internet & social media must be true’. In case you are wondering, such individual, is called ‘Webaqoof’.

New Hinglish 21st century dictionary:
*Webaqoof*: “one who believes every claim or allegation on the internet & social media must be true”

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 25, 2017

The 61-year-old MP wasn’t done yet. Right after Nitish Kumar joined hands with the NDA in July, which was the alliance that he fought against in the Bihar Assembly elections in 2015, Tharoor used another fancy word ‘snollygoster’ and even declared it ‘word of the day’.

Word of the day!
Definition of *snollygoster*
US dialect: a shrewd, unprincipled politician
First Known Use: 1845
Most recent use: 26/7/17

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 27, 2017

Taking a stand against the Padmavati controversy, Tharoor used a word ‘Thang hoog hats’ in a tweet which started trending within minutes. Interestingly, people were not able to find its meaning even on the internet. Tharoor later clarified that he wanted to say ‘than ghoonghats’.

Agree totally. The #Padmavati controversy is an opportunity to focus on the conditions of Rajasthani women today &not just of queens six centuries ago. Rajasthan’s female literacy among lowest. Education more important thang Hoog hats https://t.co/82rvGmkfwO

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 13, 2017

“Agree totally. The #Padmavati controversy is an opportunity to focus on the conditions of Rajasthani women today &not just of queens six centuries ago. Rajasthan’s female literacy among lowest. Education more important thang Hoog hats,” he had written.

The latest epic came very recently when the Congress leader while addressing the people who send him parodies of his speaking/writing style used the word ‘rodomontade’. This was later turned into a hilarious meme by Amul.