Obscure words too can cause filibustering

Parliaments are no longer the abode of logophiles, much less logomaniacs; perhaps that is why the use of obscure words leads to a war of words — the latter usually utilising more common idioms — much to the amusement of their fellow members.

Last week, the use of the word ‘filibustering’ by a Congress stalwart in the Lok Sabha whose command over the thesaurus is less well-known than another party colleague’s, led to a Union minister taking exception.

While the minister may indeed be right in surmising his interlocutor to be an ultracrepidarian, dictionaries do not always do justice to more colloquial or even arcane uses of a word.


Indeed, the original filibuster was not a long-winded lawmaker but a 19th-century term given to mercenaries who tried to capture power in several South American and Caribbean countries. So, while the minister presumably only took umbrage at being accused of delaying tactics — the modern definition of filibustering — he had reason to be far more irked.

The only acknowledged English language logophile legislator in the Lower House (others with similar interests in other languages and in the other House are less well known) now offers a weekly dose of indubitably recondite words. Hopefully, that does not indicate their imminent use in Parliament as well, given the potential for palaver to be misconstrued.