Grant shares a strange word from the fringes of English: mofussil. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Mofussil”
Earlier, we were talking about words that caught us up short the first time we ran across them.
Here’s one, Martha, that I didn’t know.
Mo Fusil. M-O-F-U-S-S-I-L.
Mo Fusil. That’s not the name of some comedian or something?
No, no. It’s one word.
And it means remote, rural, or provincial.
It comes from Urdu, and it was brought back by the British from India in the 1700s.
It originally referred to the parts of India outside of what we now call Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai, or Bombay, Kolkata, and Madras.
So it’s just a really nice, interesting, kind of strange word that lurks back there in the back catalog of English and waits until called for.
Well, if you’d like to talk about mofussels or any other kind of word, give us a call.
The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.
The address is words@waywordradio.org.
