Agra :
For octogenarian BD Bhargava, playing with words is a passion. This toothless and frail, yet dynamic man has created what he calls the world’s first and only dictionary of bacronyms. According to Wikipedia, a bacronym is “a specially constructed acronym created to fit an existing word.”
Bhargava, who is a resident of Kamla Nagar, has more than 4,000 bacronyms in his collection. The man who runs several blogs which are being followed by many teachers and students, is now planning to take his magical world of ‘words’ a step ahead.
“After playing much with words, I am playing with pictures these days. I think picture speak much more than words. This is the reason why I am inculcating graphics and pictures in my bacronyms blog and it is more attractive and easy to grasp now,” he added.
Talking about the term backronym, Bhargava said it comes from a combination of the words “back” and “acronym,” because bacronyms are essentially acronyms in reverse. While acronyms list just the initial letter of a word phrase (e.g., “FBI”), a bacronym takes the letters of a word, and makes a word phrase using those letters.
“There are two necessary things about bacronyms. The first is that the word phrase should explain the meaning of the original word. The second is that the words must start with the letters of the original word in a sequential order. For example, EAR = Earliest Audio Receiver,” he said.
Talking about the idea behind creation of his bacronym dictionary, Bhargava said he got this idea from a book ‘crazy english’ by Richard Ledrerand. “The book was magical and hit my heart. It made me think that we have a lot to play with words. And I started playing with them. Initially, I worked on small sentences but my wife and kids motivated me to go ahead with what I started, somewhere in 1996 and since then I am making bacronyms,” he added.
His son-in-law created websites for Bhargawa and later, he also started writing his own blog which has caught the attention of academicians.
The octogenarian said he had delivered special lectures in schools and institutes based in New Delhi and even abroad, but has not yet been approached by schools of his own town. “I want to share this with school kids, its fun and easy to learn,” said Bhargava.
Commenting on the hard work needed in making up bacronyms, he said it takes him three to four days to select the best possible words to form one such acronym. Adding relevant pictures is also an uphill task for Bhargava, who is unable to concentrate on computer screen due to his old age.
“Nothing is said now that hath not been said before. I am not being modest. Most of what we say (or write) has been said (or written) before. The only claim to originality that I would like to make is about bacronyms. They are my idea and my creation. I can claim that my dictionary with more than 4000 bacronyms is the world’s first and only dictionary of its kind,” he said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Agra / Ishita Mishra, TNN / August 31st, 2014