Shashi Tharoor is famously the man who sends the internet scrambling for a dictionary. As the undisputed king of Victorian-era vocabulary, he usually leaves us pondering the nuances of ‘farrago’ or ‘floccinaucinihilipilification.’ However, in a recent interview with Firstpost, the tables were turned. The literary giant stepped out of the 19th century and into the TikTok era as he was challenged to decode the linguistic mysteries of Gen Z.
The session kicked off with a term any GenZ would recognise: Drip. While a teenager uses it to compliment someone’s impeccable fashion sense or swagger, Dr. Tharoor was visibly baffled.
“A boring person, somebody who’s not particularly interesting, who’s not good company is a drip,” he explained with scholarly confidence.
Upon being corrected, Tharoor couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. In his linguistic era, being called a “drip” was a social death sentence; today, it’s a badge of honor. It was the first sign that even a sesquipedalian logophile like Tharoor might be ‘cooked’ when facing the evolution of modern lingo.
Cracking the Code: From ‘No Cap’ to ‘Ate’
The game of linguistic charades continued with varying degrees of success:
No Cap: Tharoor’s first instinct was “no limits.” Close, but no cigar—it actually translates to “no lie.”
Ate: When the interviewer told him, “You ate with those answers,” Tharoor paused, processed the context, and correctly deduced: “Did very well, I suppose.”
Delulu & Cooked: These proved much easier for the seasoned politician. He immediately identified delulu as a shorthand for “delusional.” When asked about cooked, he didn’t miss a beat: “They’re toast, they’re burned, they’re finished.”
It seems the concept of being in deep trouble is a universal human experience that transcends the generational gap.
The Ultimate ‘Bookish’ Blunder
The most endearing moment occurred when the acronym TBR was introduced. For the “BookTok” generation, TBR is a source of eternal guilt, standing for “To Be Read”—that ever-growing mountain of unread books on a bedside table.
However, Tharoor’s professional instincts kicked in. To an author and critic of his stature, TBR could only mean one thing: “The Book Review.” It was a classic “professional slip” that highlighted the gap between the formal world of publishing and the casual world of social media. Ever the diplomat, Tharoor took the correction in his stride, playfully noting, “Well, there you are, close enough.”