A mix from here and there.

Interesting bit for English lovers.

Once Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Bengali poet and scholar, jokingly asked Michael Madhusudan Dutt, an Anglophile poet of great repute, "As you are a master in English, can you make a sentence without using a single 'E'?"

Dutt, the genius, wrote this........

    "I doubt I can. It's a major part of many many words. Omitting it is as hard as making muffins without

     flour. It's as hard as spitting without saliva, napping without a pillow, driving a train without tracks,

     sailing to Russia without a boat, washing your hands without soap. And, anyway, what would I gain?

     An award? A cash bonus? Bragging rights? Why should I strain my brain? It's not worth it".

  *                     *                     *

To the Rain

Mother rain, manifold, measureless,

falling on fallow, on field and forest,

on house-roof, low hovel, high

tower,

downwelling waters all-washing,

wider

than cities, softer than sisterhood,

vaster 

than countrysides, calming,

recalling :

return to us, teaching our troubled

souls in your ceaseless descent

to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the

root,

to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the

sea.

Ursula K. Le Guin

    *                   *                     *

Word of the day

Pejorative

adjective

pih-JOR-uh-tiv

Definition

Having negative connotations; especially : tending to disparage or belittle : depreciatory

Examples

The captain has come under fire for making pejorative remarks about teammates.

"There are only two ways to influence human behaviour : you can manipulate it or you can inspire it. When I mention manipulation, this is not necessarily pejorative; it's a very common and fairly benign tactic".

- Simon Sinek, Start with Why, 2009

Did you know?

"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all". Parents have given that good advice for years but unfortunately many people haven't heeded it. The word pejorative makes it clear that both English and Latin speakers have long known that disparaging words can make a bad situation worse. 

Pejorative derives from the Late Latin adjective pejoratus, which in turn comes from the Latin verb pejorare, meaning "to make or become worse". Although pejorative words have probably always been part of English, the adjective pejorative has only been found in English texts since the late 1880s. Before then, English speakers could rely on older synonyms of pejorative such as derogatory and uncomplimentary to describe disparaging words.

Tailpiece.

Today's Ammachi's remembrance day by the Malayalam calendar. It was another occasion to remember her persona, her unconditional love and great thinking.

Got up at 6, the chores and was ready by a half past 9. A quiet day and the day remained dry with hardly any rain!

We'd the 'aazhchakkoottam' this evening and the subject was the 'NEP 2020. A very interesting session, I must say.