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Pak vandal 'Gullu' may end up as real word in Oxford Dictionary

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ANI Karachi

A well known vandal Gullu Butt, with his violence motivating disruptive behavior in Pakistan, may end up as a real word in Oxford Dictionary.

Linguist Syed Shamim Azam from Lahore, who has been watching the chubby handlebar-moustached man since he hit the TV screens on June 17 for smashing half a dozen vehicles parked around the Minhajul Quran Secretariat, wrote to Oxford Dictionaries for including the word 'gullu' in its upcoming edition for Pakistan and India, the Dawn reported.

The publishers said that if the term achieves "enormous currency with a wide audience" in less time, it will make its way in Oxford Dictionary as a term standing for the disruptive behaviour of someone enjoying (whether explicit or implicit) backing of the ruling/powerful segments of society.

 

However, a game named 'Gullu' has been already downloaded for more than 10,000 times suggesting that events have certainly established the semantic value of the word.

Azam suggested the word category of the term 'gullu' to be changed from Proper Noun to Common Noun and it should not be written with a capital letter.

The word class is changed by using morphemes like gulluish (adjective); gulluishly (adverb); gullunise (verb); gulluism (abstract noun); the plural form is gullues; the past simple tense of gullu, rather than being gullued, is gulloished; the comparative form of gulluish is more gulluish (not gulloisher, as it contains two syllables).

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First Published: Sep 26 2014 | 12:07 PM IST

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