Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday announced his latest book on Twitter. Named The Paradoxical Prime Minister, Tharoor's book, in his own words is "more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification" on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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
Tharoor's latest book is a portrait on the paradoxical figure that Modi is. "Never before has there been such a superbly written and devastatingly accurate account of the most controversial prime minister India has ever had," says the product description on Amazon. The Paradoxical Prime Minister is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.
But currently, more than the subject of the book, it is the word floccinaucinihilipilification that has got Twitterati talking. Floccinaucinihilipilification refers to the action or habit of estimating something as worthless, according to OxfordDictionaries.com. Curiously, the word does not give a result on the more acclaimed oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com.
Tharoor's love for vocabularies is popular. Earlier, he had got netizens talking when he termed an expose on his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death by a news channel as "Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations & outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalst (sic)".
Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations&outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalst
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 8, 2017
Later, when quizzed about his vocabulary, the erudite politician said that he did not intentionally scout for the toughest of words, but on the other hand, used those that he thought fit the situation. Tharoor also does not shy away from laughing at himself in his tweets. For instance, he recently tweeted:
As a childhood Tintin fan in both English & French, I love this! (Don't take the advice too literally though!) pic.twitter.com/kNeSqYmzIY
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 5, 2018
On cannot but take notice of the resemblance of the book's title with that of The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, a memoir by Sanjaya Baru, who was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's media advisor from May 2004 to August 2008. The book was published on April 20, 2014, during the 2014 general elections.
Whether Tharoor's book will dent Modi's image is an open question, but it certainly has given new life to floccinaucinihilipilification!
