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I like the pleasant jargon: I should miss it
If firms no more (“per pro” before their name)
Should “thank me for past favours and solicit
Continuance of the same”.
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Ha!
Those inst, ult and prox took me back to my school days when we had to memorize their expansions and meanings...Father, our HM and English teacher par excellence, reveled in them.
I had forgotten them all till I got this mail 3 years ago from one who shares my year of birth, and so, in the jargon of Raj Kapoor in Teesri Khasam, I can sort of call my meeth. He was a Research Scholar who did his Ph D under the guidance of my Guru, SDM, a couple of years before I joined SDM. And left serious Physics (like me) thereafter. He started an electronics components manufacturing firm in Cal and did very well. And as a hobby he researched and wrote books on the lives of Alexander the GR8, and Gautama the Buddha, and Newton...all of them rather novel...I recall he traced the birthplace of Buddha all the way to Afghanistan.
Here is the mail:
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What recalled my Father in Heaven was that cute 'extremo' in the third line. I had read of instant, ultimo and proximo but not extremo. And I Googled for it but was no wiser. Perhaps, like me, my co-guided slipped up in his memory of his school lessons of half a century vintage, and meant proximo...that was the last mail I got from him and so couldn't meet him in Hyderabad...veximo...I Googled for 'veximo' just now and got rebuked that I must have meant 'viximo'...a GSGDP...Google for it if you want the expansion of that abb...
This is now the age of short message services, aka (another abb there) textings and tweetings. And everyone is inventing his own abbs.
But during my school days we had very few abbs which, however, we had to mug up since they appeared in our school final exams. The most important ones had to do with the UNO which, at that time, was Nehru's favorite...much against the wise counsel of the original iron man, not the NaMo, viz (another abb or two there), Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, Nehru halted the military action in J&K when he was winning and took the issue (isshhoo in the words of Mush-khush) to UNO...his sister, a DKM Pandit from J&K was gunning to be the President of UNO.
And the sore bleeds.
Oh, that DKM is an abb for a pudding listed in the Hyderabadi Menus. It was a new word for me when I reached this weird place after my retirement. It expands to:
"Double ka Meetha"
Google for it if you are a foodie.
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Ultimo
Ultimo means last month. Together with instant and proximo
it’s an example of an outdated commercial language. Few businessmen
would today begin a letter “With reference to yours of the 14th ultimo”,
or “yours of the 23rd instant”, or “Please attend this office for
interview on the 11th proximo”, but it was once standard and taught in
the best books. All three were commonly abbreviated, to ult, inst and prox respectively.
Ultimo and proximo are both Latin, shortened forms of ultimo mense, in the previous month, and proximo mense, in the next month. Many reference works say inst is from Latin instante mense, in the current month. But the Oxford English Dictionary points out that it has always been expanded to the English word instant, in the specialised meaning of current.
By 1922, such terms were being satirised in Punch:
Bear up, brave clerklets, though the lights of learning
Your quaint commercial English sadly shocks,
And even your bosses are agreed in spurning
Your “inst”, and “ult”, and “prox”.
Your quaint commercial English sadly shocks,
And even your bosses are agreed in spurning
Your “inst”, and “ult”, and “prox”.
I like the pleasant jargon: I should miss it
If firms no more (“per pro” before their name)
Should “thank me for past favours and solicit
Continuance of the same”.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Ha!
Those inst, ult and prox took me back to my school days when we had to memorize their expansions and meanings...Father, our HM and English teacher par excellence, reveled in them.
I had forgotten them all till I got this mail 3 years ago from one who shares my year of birth, and so, in the jargon of Raj Kapoor in Teesri Khasam, I can sort of call my meeth. He was a Research Scholar who did his Ph D under the guidance of my Guru, SDM, a couple of years before I joined SDM. And left serious Physics (like me) thereafter. He started an electronics components manufacturing firm in Cal and did very well. And as a hobby he researched and wrote books on the lives of Alexander the GR8, and Gautama the Buddha, and Newton...all of them rather novel...I recall he traced the birthplace of Buddha all the way to Afghanistan.
Here is the mail:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Dear GPS,
I tried to contact you through
your old IIT ID but failed. Then I found (I think) it in the net. How
are you? I assume that you are now in Hyderabad. I am reaching there on
the 11th of extremo and hope to get in touch with you. I read your piece
on Prof. Dattamajumdar and felt that I should have done more to make
his work known to the general public. I am attaching an article on
Newton (in Bengali) which I wrote for a magazine last year. I have
mentioned Prof. Dattamajumdar in this article. If you find any
conceptual mistake in the article, please let me know. Does your ID give
your year of birth? If that be so you and I were born in the same year.
How is your son? Think of it - we have not met for thirty seven years.
Best wishes
What recalled my Father in Heaven was that cute 'extremo' in the third line. I had read of instant, ultimo and proximo but not extremo. And I Googled for it but was no wiser. Perhaps, like me, my co-guided slipped up in his memory of his school lessons of half a century vintage, and meant proximo...that was the last mail I got from him and so couldn't meet him in Hyderabad...veximo...I Googled for 'veximo' just now and got rebuked that I must have meant 'viximo'...a GSGDP...Google for it if you want the expansion of that abb...
This is now the age of short message services, aka (another abb there) textings and tweetings. And everyone is inventing his own abbs.
But during my school days we had very few abbs which, however, we had to mug up since they appeared in our school final exams. The most important ones had to do with the UNO which, at that time, was Nehru's favorite...much against the wise counsel of the original iron man, not the NaMo, viz (another abb or two there), Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, Nehru halted the military action in J&K when he was winning and took the issue (isshhoo in the words of Mush-khush) to UNO...his sister, a DKM Pandit from J&K was gunning to be the President of UNO.
And the sore bleeds.
Oh, that DKM is an abb for a pudding listed in the Hyderabadi Menus. It was a new word for me when I reached this weird place after my retirement. It expands to:
"Double ka Meetha"
Google for it if you are a foodie.
Talking of foodies, I am revolted whenever I happen to watch on our HD TV any channel on Travel...most of the time the travelers are found eating revolting stuff like snakes and crabs and crocs (abb again) that did them no harm.
Anyway we could mug up UNO, ILO, FAO, WB, UNESCO but gave up when we got to UNMOGIP...a thing that theoretically survives even now since it hasn't been scratched off UN's meager achievement list.
It stands (sleeps) for:
"United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan"...that's all, thank you...
Anyway, talking of abbs, a few years back I was reading every day in the Hyderabad Chronicle (a supple of DC) about our various Khans and our Supermale Model who was attached, touch and go, to our Superfemale Model and their 6-pack or even 8-pack abs...I guess they come in even numbers only.
And I was curious and it took me a long while to guess what all those abs meant...I myself have 0-pack abs:
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