I.M Soni
You are familiar with the following names: Jean Nicotine, Charles Boycott, Rudolf Diesel, Louis Braille, Joseph Guillotine and William Lynch. All of them have one thing in common: once living beings, now dead, they are still alive- living in the English dictionary. They are now well known words.
Jean Nicotine ‘breathes’ in the dictionary as nicotine. French ambassador Nicotine was gifted a tobacco plant during a visit to Portugal. Back, he went into business, when he found a growing interest in ‘plant powder’ and the nicotine it contained. He finds a place in the dictionary as the infectious lady nicotine!
Captain Boycott was hired to collect high rents from poor Irish tenants. The impoverished farmers silently ignored him. The word boycott stuck to him and found its way into the dictionary.
Rudolf Diesel was an engineer who was employed at the Krupp factory where he invented an instant combustion engine that word run on cheap crude oil. It is called a diesel engine.
Louis Braille was blinded in an accident at the age of three. He learned to read in Paris from the large embossed lettering in cumbersome books at 15. He invented his system of raised dots called braille which made its way to the dictionary.
Guillotine, a Parisian physician, was a member of the French National Assembly. He favoured a more human method of capital punishment. Sword and hanging were replaced by a ‘quick’ guillotine but his name in the dictionary has not been replaced.
Captain William Lynch of Virginia organised a group of men to punish (lynch) a band of thugs. The group won applause and approbation and the captain a nod for entry into the book of words.
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