New Words/Meanings I've Learnt (1)

Some of you might have read this article in tomorrow.sg before. Just in case tomorrow becomes yesterday and the article is no longer accessible for some reason, I have extracted the interesting portion here:

"New Singapore Vocabulary

Singaporeans shall now onwards use these new terms in their daily conversation to forever remember how we are cheated and insulted, and yet not received any apology.

NKF: (verb) - to cheat, to report lower or higher figures with an intention to cheat, to report false figures.

Eg. Ah Beng NKFed his salary to impress that chio bu he was after without realizing that she NKFed her vital statistics by wearing wonder bra.

NKF: (noun) - an organization whose modus operandi are dubious.

Eg. Ah Lian left that company because she found that it is an NKF.

TT Durai: (verb) – to secretly take and take money from company, to secretly maximize entitlements or privileges.

Eg. Ah Seng regretted not TT Durai'ing as much as possible from his ex-company before he was sacked.

Davinder Singh: (verb) – to interrogate, to grill to the finest details.

Eg. Ah Huay scolded her daughter, “Do you need me to Davinder Singh you before you tell me the truth?”

peanut: (noun) – a unit of currency equivalent to S$600,000.

Eg. The jackpot for the Toto this Thursday is 2 peanuts (S$1.2m).

Eg. Ah Kow just bought an old 1-peanut terrace house at Sembawang.

mrsgct: (noun) – a lady with a foul mouth, a lady who speaks insensitively

Eg. Ah Ngeow walked away because he tak boleh tahan that mrsgct.

educated: (adjective) – able to appreciate the many uses of taps or simple items and think their unit cost of S$1000 is cheap.

Eg. Ah Goo was extremely glad to be so educated to spent only $1000 on his toilet bowl seat."

And it seems that the list is still growing. The word "Duraiesque" was used in the 5th Feb 07 edition of Today by a Mr Balji who spent 6 months in NKF's corporate communications department in 2004 - "I remember asking him (Durai) once: What is your hierarchy? His Duraiesque answer: What hierarchy?"

In last weekend's Today (3-4 Feb 07), we were told the meanings of "parturition" and "capstones". Lawyer representing the current NKF, K Shanmugam had asked former NKF chairman Richard Yong whether he knew the meanings of those terms which appeared in letters ostensibly written by the latter but were actually written by the former NKF chief T T Durai. Richard Yong was stumped and said that he had never come across them before. Shanmugam referred to one letter signed by Yong, which praised Matilda Chua for working hard into the night "without regard to your impending parturition" - and another which said she had "produced remarkable capstones for the NKF".

I looked up my "Longman Dictionary Of Contemporary English" but failed to find the words there. Hmm... maybe my dictionary is too contemporary? So I looked up the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary found the following entries:

Why can't Durai use simpler terms like "pregnancy" instead of "impending parturition" and "achievements" instead of "capstones"? Maybe it's because he's a lawyer by training and lawyers learn bombastic English. Ironically, his powerful English happened to contribute to his undoing in the NKF scandal.

However, I must say that those new words I learnt must surely be one of the few good things that came out of the NKF saga. Of course, another good thing that has just been announced is that the new NKF has won the civil suit against its former management. Now I just can't wait for the criminal proceedings to start.