Know your English
Valued customer (M. Ramachandran, Kochi)
‘Valued’ here means ‘to have a high opinion of, attach importance to.’ A valued customer is a customer who is held in high esteem. A valued friend; a valued o¤cer. ‘Valuable’ generally goes with things. ‘Valuable’ means ‘of great value, price or worth.’
It is a valuable painting.
He gave valuable advice to her.
His friendship is valuable.
‘Valuables’ means ‘valuable things, especially small personal possessions.’
Peace breaks out (V. R. Moorti, Thiruvananthapuram)
“‘Cambodia — peace breaks out’ was a headline shown in the morning news bulletin of Doordarshan. ‘Break out’ does not go with anything good or pleasant.
War broke out.
A re broke out.
The thief tried to break out of prison. He broke out in a rash last night, the doctor says that it is because of some allergy.
Permanent, eternal (S. K. Narang, Patiala)
‘Permanent’ is the opposite of ‘temporary.’ A permanent post is a post a person holds till his retirement or death. Permanent damage to something is damage that will remain as long as the thing lasts. That is eternal which has neither a beginning nor an end. The eternal God. ‘Eternal’ also means ‘unchanging, not aected by time.’ These are some eternal truths. It also means ‘ceaseless, too frequent.’
I am tired of her eternal arguments. He is sick of their eternal bickerings. Plethora (A. Vaswani, Raichur) ‘Plethora’ means ‘over-abundance.’ It does not just mean ‘a lot,’ but means ‘excessive amount.’ It is followed by ‘of.’
The report contains a plethora of details.
I don’t have the time to plough through the plethora of details.
I had to listen to a plethora of complaints.
The ‘e’ in the word is pronounced like the ‘e’ in ‘bed,’ the ‘o’ and the ‘a’ like the ‘a’ in ‘India.’ The stress is on the rst syllable.
The word is from the Greek ‘pletho’, be full. In medicine, ‘plethora’ is ‘an abnormal excess of red corpuscles in the blood’ or ‘any excess of body §uid.’
Published in The Hindu on December 3, 1991