Snollygoster: Tharoor’s ‘word of the day’ jibe

Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday took a swipe at JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar over his latest volte-face after he walked out of the Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar, dubbing him as a “snollygoster” or a shrewd and unprincipled politician.

He shared his social media post from 2017 when Kumar had broken away from the Mahagathbandhan or the grand alliance in Bihar with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress and returned to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) despite being foes for a long time.

“Word of the day! Definition of *snollygoster* US dialect: a shrewd, unprincipled politician. First Known Use: 1845. Most recent use: 26/7/17,” Tharoor had tweeted in 2017.

Tagging that post, the former Union minister said Sunday in a post of X, “Didn’t realise it would be the Word of Another Day too!#snollygoster.” The prolific author and man of many letters, known for throwing in obscure English words into social media lexicon, has used snollygoster earlier as well.

In 2017, he had tweeted the word in an apparent reference to Kumar switching sides to the BJP. He did so again in 2019 when BJP's Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as chief minister of Maharashtra with Nationalist Congress Party's Ajit Pawar seemingly switching over to support a BJP-led government.

In November 2022, Tharoor had taken a swipe at party-hopping politicians in India by posting a video of a chameleon changing shades as it climbs a colour-banded pole and threw in the rarely used word snollygoster.

His sharp-witted jibe had then come in the backdrop of several politicians switching sides ahead of the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat assembly polls.

The Congress on Sunday compared Bihar Kumar to a “chameleon”, and said the people of the state will never forgive him for his “betrayal”.

(With agency inputs)