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A column in The Hindu which helps you learn English

This is a word I haven’t heard in a while. As a kid going to school in the 1960s, it was the favourite word of some of my teachers — when we couldn’t understand a concept they were trying to teach us or when we failed to solve a math problem, we were called ‘duffers’. It comes from the Scottish ‘duffar’ meaning ‘dull’ or ‘stupid’. When the word was first used, it referred to someone of very low morals; a no-good cheat who sold counterfeit goods. With the passage of time, however, the meaning “no good” shifted from the seller to the naïve buyer. The individual was “no good” because he did not have the intelligence to differentiate between real and fake goods. By the way, the first syllable of ‘duffer’ rhymes with ‘stuff’, ‘tough’ and ‘rough’.

All the candidates we interviewed this morning were duffers.

Unlike me, none of my cousins were duffers at school.

The word has other meanings as well. A duffer is someone who is not very good at games — a person who plays golf without any skill is usually called a ‘duffer’.

Mala was kind enough to play a round with us although she knew we were duffers.

Please don’t include me. I’m a duffer at cricket.

The word consists of three syllables. The ‘c’ sounds like the ‘s’ in ‘sit’, ‘sip’ and ‘sin’, while the following ‘y’ sounds like the ‘y’ in ‘my’ and ‘by’. The ‘o’ in the second syllable sounds like the ‘a’ in ‘china’, while the final syllable is pronounced like the word ‘sure’. One way of pronouncing the word is ‘SY-ne-sure’ with the stress on the first syllable. It comes from the Greek ‘kynosoura’ meaning ‘dog’s tail’, and this term was used to refer to Ursa Minor or the North Star. Being a fixed star, sailors remained focussed on it; in fact, for several centuries, they depended on it to navigate around the world.