The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’ as ‘the action or habit of estimating something as worthless’. The word has Latin roots—flocci, nauci, nihili, pili—all of which mean ‘at little value’.
In the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee, Chetan Ghate, a government-nominated member, stated in August 2019: “Estimates of economic growth in India have unfortunately been subject to a fair degree of floccinaucinihilipilification. Notwithstanding this, growth is likely to pick up from Q2–Q3: 2019–2020.”
The minutes referred to the 3rd bimonthly monetary policy review that was announced on August 7, 2019. Clearly, Ghate had used the word to characterise the efforts of several economists who have raised doubts about the validity of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) estimates.
Even Arvind Subramanian, an Indian economist and the former Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) to the Government of India, had openly questioned India’s GDP estimates in early 2019, alleging that existing GDP growth rates overestimate growth by as much as 2.5 percentage points.
The word ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’, a 29-letter word, got widespread publicity in October 2018 when Congress leader Shashi Tharoor mentioned it in a tweet promoting his book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tharoor had tweeted: “My new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister, is more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification.”
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