Our time is tight, our feelings lie in a knot.We need to think fast, say it quick, keep it short. Our age abbreviates. Now that is a long word, 'abbreviates'. Too long for something to do with cutting. Better say our age cuts. It cuts writing to word-counts, words to sound-counts. One hundred sixty characters to an SMS, 140 characters to a tweet.

The internet has its own contractions. Love, especially lots of it, is among the first to shrivel. LOL. Followed by longing. WUWH - wish you were here. And MUSM - miss you so much. And wife? The internet cut calls her Y5. Are all such cuts tongue in cheek - TIC? I suspect they are. ISTA.

The one internet word-cut I gratefully use is BTW.

These word-cuts are word caricatures.

I started by saying our time is tight. But every age has had its problems with time and has tried to save both time and space when writing. Stenographer's shorthand, old Pitman, was about that. Crimping a word to save on time and space is not ipso facto wrong. In fact, it is quite bona fide. Some of the shortened forms - not the internet type - can be quite beautiful, like Moghul, Basohli and Kangra miniature paintings.

Traditionally, the shortening of words to abbreviations or acronyms has been done to shrink what we need to write, say, express under constraints of time and space. The net has only carried it to absurdity.

Old-style word-cuts, like those we use from the originals in Latin, are word miniatures.

Latin abbreviations? Do we use those ?

All the time, without realizing that we are doing so. For that matter we use Latin phrases in 'everyday English' all the time. I have used ipso facto and bona fide in the preceding lines without thinking of Latin. And we use Latin abbreviations as well.

The most frequently used of these is etc. There is nothing beautiful about that abbreviation. That stump of a word is about a supernumerary-ness, an extra-hood, a dispensable surplus. It serves us well when we want to close a line in speech or writing. But if we pause to see where it is derived from, we may stop using the chopped-up version and, instead, go for the full original. After all, when pronouncing etc. we say the whole phrase, not its short form. Etc. comes from the Latin et (and) plus cetera (the rest), the phrase in its entirety meaning 'and the rest'. The importance of cetera can be seen in its uses in Latin other than in et cetera. As for instance in cetera desunt (the rest is missing) or in ceteris paribus (other things being equal). The Sanskrit for 'the rest' or 'others', is the beautiful itara which even sounds like cetera. Etc. in Sanskritik Hindi is ityadi, a compound of the particle iti and adi, making 'the rest' a kin of the first, original, primal. We can and should be aware of the full expanded et cetera to signify 'and the rest'. We will then see the word-miniature in etc.

Similar is the case of et al. The phrase is traditionally used to group together fellow-authors of a researched paper of which the most important name is given up-front, the fellow-authors being covered in et al. Do joint authors mind being among the et al? I am not sure. In any case, it might help all concerned to know that et al is derived from et alia, meaning 'and other things'(including other people) and is economizing on space but not on courtesy, certainly not in the sharing of authorial ascription. We should be using et alia, instead of the abrupt et al.

So, is this piece a Latin promo?

Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Tamil do not need promotion. They need attention. Not for their sakes, but ours.

Writing in his autobiography about the syllabus for his London matriculation in which Latin was compulsory, Gandhi speaks of a friend who advised him to go full steam ahead with that test. I wish we knew the name of that friend. Alas (alas, btw, is from the Latin lassus, wearied). Young Mohandas agreed... "But...," he writes, "[h]ow was I to manage Latin? But the friend entered a strong plea for it. 'Latin is very valuable to lawyers... Besides a knowledge of Latin means greater command over the English language.' I went home and I decided to learn Latin, no matter how difficult it might be." Without the slightest doubt, Latin's epigrammatic quality helped Gandhi develop a chiselled and economic English literary style which enhanced the impact of whatever he wanted to say.

Latin phrases and abbreviations dot his writing, to the advantage of precision, concision and emphasis. D.v., a phrase which used to be invoked in speech and writing fairly regularly until not so long ago, is from deo volente, meaning god willing. This has an exact Urdu equivalent is inshAllah, suggesting both faith and a certain insecurity because the protagonist, in saying that, is turning to god beyond all human agency. Gandhi used it naturally, as in his 1945 letter to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur: "My programme, D.V., is: leave here 19, Bombay 20, Sevagram 21 to 29, entrain for Calcutta 30 morning, reaching Calcutta 1st December."

D.v., if used today, would send the reader to a dictionary. And its etymology would send her or him to sleep.

But not c.v. That word-cut of curriculum vitae which our competitive times use so routinely, hides a lovely etymology. The first of those two words in Latin means a race, and the second means life. So the phrase is, literally, about the race of life. An ancient Latin phrase for our times, so very apt. (Apt, btw, is derived from the Latin aptus, suitable).

So?

Is all this about a dead language's greatness ?

It is and it is not.

It is about the importance of seeing words as pictures, language as literature. If only to enrich our experience of life.

Take another Latin phrase reduced to initials: D.O.M., which is printed on the label of the bottle that contains Bénédictine, the prized liqueur. Standing for Deo optimo maximo (to god, the best, the greatest), D.O.M. reminds Bénédictine connoisseurs of the liqueur's origins in the Benedictine order. Monks brewing wine? Well, yes. So much the better for both. Gandhi writes (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 63, p. 379), "...In the Boer War, I myself served wine to the stone-breakers in my corps and served bidis to others. Discretion is very necessary in doing all such things. Generosity to others is as necessary as strictness with oneself." Again, I wish I knew the brand of the wine that Gandhi poured or handed out. Did he say 'Cheers' as he did so ? He could, if it was Bénédictine, have said D.O.M.

Be it etc., c.c., ad hoc, in toto, ab initio, alter ego, alma mater and a host of other phrases (not counting legal and medical terms) that we use in everyday speech, English speakers are, by definition, amateur Latin speakers as well. And that being the case, we should sharpen our incipient knowledge of the language of Virgil, Horace, Seneca and turn, as a simple consequence, to Latin maxims.

Why should we do that?

Because, like Sanskrit subhashitams or Tamil kurals, Latin maxims give us crisp lessons in life's verities. Where except in Latin can one find the warning to our times contained in homo unius libri, a man of one book? Or the veracity of amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas - Plato is dear to me, Socrates is dear, but truth is dearer still?