The moment I began writing this column my son managed to snatch my iPad from me, and when I yelled at him, he replied in a sarcastic tone, “Dad, An apple a day keeps the doctors away!” Suddenly something kindled, words and phrases which have rapidly acquired new meanings and contexts rushed to my mind.

The original mouse lost its identity when computers came in; Cat also lost its charm with ‘Cat shoes’ emerging a popular brand. Orange and Blackberry are no more fruits! Again, text messaging and ringtone are part of the mobile phone club. Spam, once a brand of canned meat is now used to describe junk e-mails. Harald Bluetooth is no more a Danish king.

Majority consider Shakespeare as the one who introduced maximum words into English, but in reality it was John Milton whose contribution stands at 630 words (with 229 words in his credit, Shakespeare is ranked much below). I wouldn’t subscribe to the observation that all these words were invented by these authors. In fact, their works simply carried the first recorded use and subsequently such words became popular as famous authors are read and heard across the globe, unlike the obscure ones.

One of my hobbies has been to pick up obsolete words from Johnson’s dictionary. Words like grum (bad tempered), tonguepad (a great talker), lusk (idle or worthless), keck ( to heave the stomach as if about to vomit), feculent (foul or grimy) are no more in use.

I have absolutely no clue as to how these typhoons, storms and hurricanes are named, but most of them have female names. According to some, US army officials, during second world war, named pacific storms after their girlfriends or wives, quite similar to what many pilots did with their fighter planes. Most of the husbands shall agree that, no names, other than their wives would exactly sound good for a disaster or catastrophe.

Do storms’ names have hidden meanings? Some Intelligent symbologists are of the view that Sandy had a nickname ‘hybrid storm’ and ‘Franken storm,’ both referring to man-made things. If you look in to the recent typhoon ‘Haiyan’ – it is a Chinese name for petrel, a sea bird. Does ‘Petrel’ hide some clues about the ‘petrol’ issues between China and Philippines? The conspiracy analyst believes so! I

have no clue as to when those ‘grum’ survivors in Philippines are almost to ‘keck’ because of the polluted air. I feel and smell ‘feculent’ and believe that a ‘tonguepad’ like China should do something more than donating $100,000 to the relief fund. When I discussed this matter with one of my friends, he replied ‘FUNTABULOUS.’ I have no clue where this word came from, but at least could understand what he meant. I think this word can go to wiktionary with a meaning – (when someone acts as if they did something great and simply providing something to laugh at).