Pundit

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Dr. Goodword
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Pundit

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:58 pm

• pundit •

Pronunciation: pên-dit • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A learned person, an expert. 2. Someone asked for an opinion, someone who presents the verisimilitude of a pundit.

Notes: The meaning of today's Good Word has become a bit tarnished of late. It originally referred to a genuine expert. Today a pundit is not someone who has studied the subject of their expertise deeply, but someone who has simply been involved in it, a verisimilar pundit, so to speak. More and more often 'pundits' are newspaper reporters in the US. The knowledge and activities of a pundit are known as punditry, and a pundit behaves in a punditly manner.

In Play: As suggested above, pundits today are people who simply think they are smart: "The best part of the presidential debates comes after the debates themselves, when the political pundits explain to us what we have just heard." Maybe we need a new word: 'telepunditry': "The basic qualification for pundits these days is the ability to talk faster than you can think without blushing."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Hindi pandit "learned man, scholar", the descendant of Sanskrit panditah. In fact, a real Indian pundit is still called a pandit even in English. Where the Sanskrit word came from is a big mystery. (Sanskrit is the oldest known Indo-European language; the closest language to Proto-Indo-European.) When the Indo-European peoples moved into India, they apparently shared the Indian subcontinent with those already living there, the Dravidian peoples (speakers of Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and others). Etymologists speculate that panditah may have been borrowed from the ancestor of one of these languages. (The real pundit who suggested today's word is Donnella Lawson of Wichita, Kansas.)
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LukeJavan8
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Re: Pundit

Postby LukeJavan8 » Sun Apr 26, 2015 12:13 pm

I always think of the 'talking heads' on news media tv.
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Perry Lassiter
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Re: Pundit

Postby Perry Lassiter » Sun Apr 26, 2015 2:44 pm

Excellent definiion of pundit - talking heads!
pl

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call_copse
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Re: Pundit

Postby call_copse » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:06 am

Not sure why, I understand that the other uses are correct, but pundit seems to be used primarily to refer to a sports commentator here in the UK.
Iain

LukeJavan8
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Re: Pundit

Postby LukeJavan8 » Mon Apr 27, 2015 12:00 pm

We used to have news anchors who gave the news,
but in recent years they have all become like
sports pundits in the UK, hence talking heads. No where
in this country (that is available on air to me, anyhow),can
one get just the news, story by story. We have to drag
it out with the whole history back to the dawn of time,
with dozens of commentaries, continued the next day, and
so on. So I can understand your comparison to sports
folks. They have become the same here with news
anchors. And it is frightfully nauseating.
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