Of Slumdog, Dictionary and Millionaires

Having studied in a Marathi medium school, I have retained the habit of looking up every new word in dictionary.

This occasionally throws up surprise. In the company where I work, they decided that performance of various departments will not be reviewed every quarter [three months], but it will be done once in four months. Somebody then said ‘we will have trimesterly reviews’. The word gained currency, and everybody was using the word trimester to mean ‘once in four months’. Trimester was understood to divide the year in three parts!

Out of curiosity and old habit I looked up dictionary that said quarter of a year and trimester is same! [Actually Tri = Three, mester = Month]. Such was the conviction within the company that the word meant one-third of the year that I won six bottles of beer by taking bets.


So this time it was the turn of Slumdog. Very few could explain to me what exactly it meant.

I consulted Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. No answer, they do not know.

So gave a search ‘What does Slumdog mean?’ on Ask.com
Here are the two answers.

1. It means a very poor person who lives in a slight place. [on Yahoo!]

2. This one is mathematical, [on Wiki,answers.com]
‘Underdog from slum…….. Slum + underdog = Slumdog!!!’

There are a million slums here and also a million slumdogs! Come over to Bharat [India to Indians] and meet them. It may just be as rewarding as earning millions!!

Cheers!!

Vivek