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Pariah

Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2014 10:34 pm
by Dr. Goodword

• pariah •

Pronunciation: pê-rai-yê • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. An untouchable in the Hindu hereditary caste system, someone beneath the lowest of the castes. 2. A social outcast, a tainted person ostracized from normal company and avoided.

Notes: We should find an abstract noun expressing the state of being a pariah, but writers have not been able to agree on one. William Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom! used pariahhood, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has recently resorted to the rather clunky pariahism. Pariahship sounds better, but pariahdom has been used most widely in recent publications.

In Play: Pariahdom is usually evoked only by the most heinous of crimes: "Saddam Hussein's crimes against his own people made him a pariah in the civilized world." However, be careful, for even the smallest prank can sometimes lead to this brutally shameful repercussion: "Justin Case has been a pariah in the office since it was discovered that he was the one who put the goldfish in the water cooler."

Word History: Today's good and scary word probably originated as Tamil paraiyar, the plural of paraiyan "drummer, pariah caste", from parai "festival drum". (Tamil is a Dravidian tongue unrelated to Indo-European languages like Hindi and English.) The Tamil word originally referred to a tribe of South Indian sorcerers and ceremonial drummers who became untouchables when they took on unsanitary jobs as laborers and servants. British colonialists brought the word home from India; it first appeared in print in England in 1613. (Today we thank Kyle McDonald, a Lexiterian who is very socially integrated into the Alpha Agora, for suggesting today's word there.)

Re: Pariah

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 4:08 am
by Slava
Perhaps an excellent synonym for pariah here on the Agora is "spammer". Bottom-feeders who post worthless garbage or ads here are deleted with great pleasure.