"Floccinaucinihilipilification", the new word used by Tharoor that has left Twitterati flabbergasted

Tharoor is known for using unheard of words in his tweets.

New Delhi, Oct 10: After 'rodomontade' and 'troglodytes' sent people running for dictionaries, Congress leader and author Shashi Tharoor has now used a word which is nearly unpronounceable. "Floccinaucinihilipilification" happens to be the new word that Tharoor has used in one of his tweets.

Tharoor is known for using unheard of words in his tweets. In December last year, he used the word 'rodomontade', meaning boastful or inflated talk or behaviour. And in February this year, he introduced 'troglodytes' to the Twitter world in a response to Vinay Katiyar's comment on the Taj Mahal.

This time, in a tweet promoting his new book of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tharoor wrote, "My new book, THE PARADOXICAL PRIME MINISTER, is more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification. Pre-order it to find out why!."

According to the Oxford dictionary, the word is a noun and means "the action or habit of estimating something as worthless". Discussing the usage of the word, the dictionary adds, "Floccinaucinihilipilification is one of a number of very long words that occur very rarely in genuine use."

As for the book on PM Modi, Amazon has described it as "Shashi Tharoor has stitched together a compelling portrait of this paradoxical figure (Narendra Modi). Never before has there been such a superbly written and devastatingly accurate account of the most controversial prime minister India has ever had."

In May 2017, the MP from Thiruvananthapuram and author of 17 books got netizens talking when he described the coverage of the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar by a news channel as an "Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalist".

OneIndia News with PTI inputs