Wordsmith Tharoor strikes again-‘Algospeak’ is his latest addition to Twitter lexicon

New Delhi, July 20

Algospeak — that’s Congress leader and wordsmith Shashi Tharoor’s latest addition to Twitter lexicon.

The leader, known for throwing in rarely used English words into his posts, on Wednesday shared the meaning of his “word of the day”.

“Algospeak (noun): word used on social media posts to avoid using another that algorithms may identify as unsuitable or inappropriate, in order to bypass downranking by content moderation filters on social media platforms. Eg. using ‘unalive’ rather than ‘dead’,” Tharoor tweeted.

The Congress MP also responded to a Twitter post, saying that for ‘word’ troubles there is Shashi Tharoor. The post had some words deemed unparliamentary in a booklet released by the Lok Sabha Secretariat recently and their replacements of tough rarely used words.

“Not my doing but quite clever!” Tharoor tweeted, tagging the post.

This is not the first time the author-politician-wordsmith has sent Twitterati scurrying for their dictionaries to confirm whether such words indeed exist.

A couple of months ago, Tharoor had shared his “word of the era” — doomscrolling.

“Word of the Era!  Merriam Webster Dictionary says they are watching the increasing use of this term (along with ‘doomsurfing’). Increased consumption of predominantly negative news could have psychological ill effects, in addition to causing political depression…,” Tharoor had tweeted with a screenshot of the word ‘doomscrolling’ and its meaning.

Earlier in May, Tharoor had taken a dig at the Ministry of Railways with a difficult-to-pronounce head-scratcher — quomodocunquize.

“To make money by any means possible,” the meaning posted by him had said.

Before that he had posted the word quockerwodger.

“A quockerwodger was a type of wooden puppet. In politics, a quockerwodger was a politician acting on the instructions of an influential third party, rather than properly representing their constituents,” he had said.

In the past, he has stumped people with words such as ‘farrago’ and ‘troglodyte’.

While ‘farrago’ means a confused mixture, ‘troglodyte’ means a person regarded as being deliberately ignorant or old-fashioned.