Doing “bakar” might just be the best way to spend the whole day. Words or usages are being coined or rephrased at a fierce speed every day, especially online. The most attractive mailing lists post words that can be slightly off-colour, imaginative, interesting, impolite and challenging — words that remain outside the formal domains. Words posted this week on urbandictionary.com include “fauxtograph”, a practical joke in which the video setting of a digital camera is used to trick the target into posing for a really long time for what isn’t a picture at all, “bragadocious”, an adjective describing someone who is bragging too much and “I approve this message”, a phrase you can use when leaving a message on the answering machine of a very political friend or relative. Example: “Hi, I’m your son and I approve this message. I’d be happy to dog-sit while you’re away for the week. By the way, I mailed in my ballot... so stop nagging me to vote.”

But these mailing lists are mostly of English words, originating in the Western world. In the off-line world, campuses in and around Calcutta seem to be as inventive with vocabulary. New words are coming up here every day, too, and sometimes passing into mainstream speech. “Every generation has its own coinages. It is similar to the willingness to try out new clothes. But one difference that exists between today’s generation and the previous perhaps is the fact that this generation can freely converse in that language in the presence of parents. And at times, even parents are heard using it,” says former professor of Jadavpur University and lexicographer Ashoke Mukhopadhay.

So doing bakar might just be the best way to spend the whole day. For there is more to college lingo than common words and phrases like “fundu” and “chill out”. The wide variety can make the etymologist lose focus trying to trace the origin of the bewildering words. Metro goes from campus to campus collecting them:

Abbreviations

These have become more popular with the advent of SMS and instant messaging. Acronyms like OTT (over the top) or FYI (for your information) have become part of regular conversation in colleges. But there are those that are particular to certain campuses and need getting used to.

At the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, any request for movies, songs or information of any kind is accompanied by the ubiquitous acronym TIA (thanks in advance).

The words are used with a freedom that is lost in later life. “There is an element of chyangrami (cheekiness) in the words that come into being on campuses and can’t be reproduced in official or mainstream places,” says Mukhopadhyay.

Some abbreviations could also mean exactly the opposite of what is being said. The acronym NOM (no offense meant) on the Joka campus in practice actually conveys all that it means not to. So someone would say: “You are a moron — NOM.” This means the recipient is actually considered a moron. “The rider at the end of any message absolves the writer of ill will towards his fellow human,” says Vijay Menon, a second-year student of IIM Calcutta, who has made an exhaustive list of words current on campus. The list includes words like “fatleez” (used when all hell breaks loose) and “lessss”, which means stupidity, incompetence or plain outrageous. “The number of S’s indicate the various degrees of comparison,” explains Menon.

Others in this category include CAM (Can’t Agree More), used to demonstrate complete agreement with the opinions of an individual often without the intention of contributing anything but proof of presence to a discussion. CP (class participation) becomes DP (desperate participation), which is asking a question in class out of the sheer desperation arising out of having not asked a question for the last 9 minutes and 23 seconds. “Backbenchers believe that given a sufficiently large sample any CP eventually changes to DP,” says Menon.

Definitions

“Small people” (pronounced pepool) is a word-to-word translation of the ever popular Bengali term Chhotolok (lowly) used widely on the Calcutta University campus.

If you are too serious a student with an equally serious visage and happen to go to a medical school, chances are that you will be called a “morgue’s face”. If you act holier than thou, you will be known as a “vegetative reproduction”. “This phrase has been coined by our batch,” says Mainak Pal, a third-year student at NRS Medical College and Hospital.

They also have a particular word to describe a pretty nurse. It is “puti”, after the small yet dainty puti fish. Sexist.

A word peculiar to the IIMC campus, originating from the outrageously skewed ratio of males to females on the campus is “geela”, which is someone who runs after the opposite sex. “The more statistically-oriented have calculated that the chance of a male student accidentally running into more than one female in a week is less likely than a trip to the Andromeda galaxy. Hence any guy seen with more than one girl is automatically branded a geela,” says Menon.

A medical college teacher who conducts boring classes is referred to as “Bell’s Palsy”, derived from a neurological disease where your eyelids droop.

Nouns

“Dud” and “stud” (pronounced stood) refer to wannabes or gasbags. “We usually direct them at boys who are too full of themselves but are actually quite awful to look at,” laughs 19-year-old Anjali Ghosh, a student of Bidhannagar College. She calls goggles “jaggles” when the glares are in bad taste or downmarket. “Mama” is used as an address, much like Dada, but it’s reserved for a comrade, or for someone who can be condescended to. It is also widely used as an adjective to describe various things, much like the word “gola”, for instance “mama jinish” (great thing).

The IIMCians use the noun “bakar” (from “bakar bakar”, chatter) to imply random, or “arbit”, talk. It is usually practised on the internal messenger, and has been officially recognised as an art form by the student community. “Sometimes new words are coined while friends are sitting around chatting and with regular usage becomes popular. On the IIMC campus, a lot of the abbreviations are born out of the internal messaging system that the students use. They get passed around and slowly slip into mainstream college lingo, says Menon.

Verbs

Among the new words that have crept into the campus dictionary are verbs like “campussing”. It is the new coinage for campus recruitment, widely used on medical, management and engineering college premises. If you are looking to avoid someone, the term to use is “shunting”, a word from electrical engineering.

Two terms common to the IIMCians are “globe” and “putlake”. To globe is to inflate an answer or a presentation with a lot of management mumbo jumbo like “paradigm shift”, “ROI” (return on investment) or “arbitrage” (the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets) for the express purpose of obtaining marks. The word comes from the vastness that the globe connotes. After an exam one is likely to say: “Aaj ke paper mein globe maarte maarte thak gaya.” “Putlake” means to “dunk someone into one of the seven lakes on the campus (eight if it’s raining)”. Birthdays, goof-ups, PPO converts (pre-placement offers that are converted to appointments) or poor jokes, any event or action can qualify a person to be putlaked. “Though invoked at the drop of a hat the actual act is rarely performed because it requires more calories the average IIMCian is willing to expend, however noble the cause,” says Menon. And the usage: “Greg Chappell ko putlake karo!”

Disguises

But parents are smarter today. “Nowadays, parents are very much in sync with the lingo. So, we have to keep innovating,” chirps Anjali. She and her friends have invented words like “O duck!” for a word that rhymes closely and “blooming” for “bloody”. They may be words of appreciation too. “We used to say jiyo mama or pagla toh! to applaud someone, be it for scoring a goal or proposing to that hot girl,” says Kaustav Halder, employed with a Bangalore-based IT company. “Aandoz”, which means bring it on, is used popularly by the IIMCians to convey excited anticipation. Aandoz, India? Not to mention something called Mahayana, the distilled essence of the two great Indian epics, which is a legend on Calcutta campuses. It is unprintable.