WICKED WORD

By V.S. jayaschandran



Calicut gave English the word calico, and Kashmir yielded cashmere. Machilipatnam, once known as Masulipatnam, perhaps supplied the word muslin. Cambric cotton from Cambrai in France gave them stiff competition. Levi Strauss took canvas cloth from Genoa in Italy to pitch tents in America. The cloth from Genoa came to be called jeans. The cloth he took from Nimes in France, called serge de Nimes, became denims. English has hundreds of such words derived from names of places. These are called toponyms.

Michigan bankroll, a toponym, is a bundle of notes with real currency only at the top and the bottom. The CBI trapped Sarabjot Singh with such bundles. A Chinese compliment is a polite interest in others’ views when one has already made up one’s mind. Note how Beijing seeks to build strategic trust with New Delhi, when a Chinese think-tank wants India balkanised into 20 to 30 countries.

Aamir Khan is producing a loose motion picture, Delhi Belly. But it may well be a story of love in the time of cholera, not just traveller’s diarrhoea. Delhi belly initiates visitors to the capital’s culinary cruelties. Mexican two-step is another name for alimentary canal unplugged. It compels the sufferer to leap to the loo.

“I gotta go pee, I want to go home,” whimpers Yolanda, the restaurant robbing woman, in Pulp Fiction. She is in a Mexican stand-off, an impasse of three or more people holding guns to one another’s head. The director Tarantino stages yet another Mexican stand-off in his latest film, the queerly spelt Inglourious Basterds.

A Mexican raise is a promotion with no increase in pay. An Irishman’s rise is less pay for doing the same job. Irish toothache is something swollen—either an erection or a pregnancy. Tata honcho R. Gopalakrishnan keeps a toothbrush handy. “I brush after every meal,” he said at the IIT Kharagpur convocation on August 8. He picked up the habit while working for a toothpaste company, he told a friend. “Thank God you don’t work for a condom company!” the friend exclaimed. Brushing teeth after a meal is fine, but putting on a condom after the act requires ingenuity.

Condoms were invented not to control birth, but as protection against private infections. They were made of cloth, animal skin or intestine. French letter originated from such sheath. A French tickler was of the ribbed kind. The church ripped condoms and promoted Vatican roulette. This rhythm method of contraception is a hit and miss game. If you lose it you get life. If you lose playing Russian roulette you get death.

Rome’s fears over condoms are not altogether unfounded. In 2001, doctors in Meerut found a condom in a 27-year-old schoolteacher’s lungs. After pulling it out, they wrote in a medical journal: “Retrospectively, both the husband and wife accepted to having undergone a fellatio. They could recollect that the condom had loosened during the act, and at that time the lady had also experienced an episode of sneezing and coughing.”
France boasts a village named Condom. The word does not mean contraceptive in French. The river Baise flows by it. If you say baise in French, you are asking for sex.

Condoms are taboo in the Amish commune called Intercourse in Pennsylvania. A tour of the state could be stimulating. After Zipdown, you can spend time in Ballplay or Lickdale, go for Intercourse, reach Climax and then Yocumtown. Hillary Clinton’s office is in Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC, but S.M. Krishna skipped Mount Buggery in Australia. In England, one can stroll through Butt Hole Road in South Yorkshire, and Sluts Hole Lane in Norfolk. Belgium has Labia, and Russia is proud of its Vagina in Kurgan city.

Germany has two touchy-feely towns, Petting and Titting. Near Petting is an Austrian town whose name is pronounced as Foocking but written with a ‘u’ instead of the double ‘o’. Tourists love stealing the name board.

wickedword09@gmail.com
(The Week)
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