In a rare courtroom moment, a Delhi court used the 29-letter word *floccinaucinihilipilification* to label a defamation case as worthless. The case, filed by Somnath Bharti’s wife, was tied to political remarks made in 2024.
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In a case that sounds like it came straight out of a Scrabble marathon, a Delhi court dismissed the defamation complaint filed by AAP leader Somnath Bharti’s wife against Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, labeling the whole affair as… wait for it… ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’.
Yes, that’s a real word. And yes, it basically means “totally worthless.”
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The case revolved around remarks Sitharaman made at a 2024 press conference. According to the court, these comments were part of “political opposition and antagonism” directed at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Indi Alliance.
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ACJM Paras Dalal of the Rouse Avenue Courts didn’t mince words. “The word is ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’, which implies something valueless or worthless,” the court said. “The present complaint is nothing but the word stated above, wherein a valueless or worthless material has been stretched too long.”
Translation? The court basically said the case was a big fuss over nothing, and political rivals can’t cry defamation just for pointing out inconvenient scenarios.
While the court’s phrasing stole the spotlight, the word itself is a celebrity in Indian media circles. It first hit mainstream attention in 2021 when Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, famous for his love of rare, tongue-twisting English words, tossed it into a friendly banter with KT Rama Rao about the complex names of Covid-19 medicines.
Tharoor joked, “On a lighter note, any idea who comes up with these unpronounceable names for meds? Posaconazole, Cresemba, Tocilizumab… and the list goes on.” Then he casually dropped ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’, reminding everyone that English can be as dramatic as politics.
He once dropped ‘exasperating farrago of distortions’ and the internet lost its calm. Of course, he is the same person who defined idli as “a cloud, a whisper, a perfect dream of the perfectibility of human civilisation.” Sigh.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines it simply: “the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.” Fancy, but straightforward, especially if your opponent’s complaint is basically a storm in a teacup.
Here’s where it gets nerdy-fun. ‘Floccinaucinihilipilification’ was born in 18th-century England, reportedly coined by a bunch of witty Eton schoolboys. They mashed together four Latin words ‘flocci’, ‘nauci’, ‘nihili’, and ‘pili’ all carrying the meaning “of little or no value.”
The result? A colossal word to express the act of calling something trivial, worthless, or insignificant.
Back then, it was mostly a playful intellectual exercise, a way for scholars to flex their vocabulary muscles. Today, it’s a courtroom mic-drop.
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