“Have you ever done one of those word articles you write on the word ‘pundit’?” my friend Erin texts. “This may be me being stupid, but as a person who learns almost all definitions from context clues, only today did I find out it’s not a slur.”
There’s a lot to say about this excellent editorial assignment. First, on the limitations of context clues: Please, please never use the phrase “context is everything.” “Con” is Latin for “with,” so context means the side stuff that goes with the main stuff. It, by definition, can’t be everything. Also, just from life experience, people who take the time to assert that context is everything tend to believe other silly things they picked up in some type of grad school.
Second, “pundit” actually has a fascinating history. Erin was shocked to find, per Dictionary.com, that it means “a learned person, expert, or authority; a person who makes comments or judgments, especially in an authoritative manner.” But its history dates to India.
In the massive book Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia, authors Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac write: “The pundit, a title meaning ‘learned Hindu,’ said he had visited Tibet as a youth and knew where to find the precious shawl-wool goat, a creature coveted by the British.”
Later, they explain the peculiarities of this expert class and its position in Himalayan society post-1830: “Over the centuries, Rawats intermarried with neirubors called Bhotias, a Hindu people of Tibetan origin. Though the Bhotian Rawats had Hindu names, they were not deemed orthodox by Hindus in the plains and were able in Tiber to pass readily as Buddhists. It was this clan, so adept at mediating, that provided ‘the pundits’ for the surreptitious British surveys of India’s borderlands through the entire Victorian era.”
The Oxford English Dictionary is much better than Dictionary.com, so its definitions reflect a proper understanding of the word’s origin and development. It has as its first definition “a learned Hindu.” Only in the secondary definition does it mark out the more current usage: “a learned expert or teacher (colloq[ial] and humorous) … hence punditly adv. (nonce-wd), in the manner of a teacher, in a learned way.” The dictionary gives an example of the humorous usage involving pundits who “condescend.”
But at some point, the transfigured modern English version of the pundit-talking-head-newsman as a bit of a joke started needing special emphasis. Stephen Colbert listed “fundit” as one of his titles back on his old show (you know, the good one). Jonah Goldberg on his podcast self-deprecates by stressing he is engaging in “rank punditry.”
So why did Erin, who’s sharp, think “pundit” was a slur from context clues, when pundit literally means a subject matter expert? The same reason people, when polled, report having low trust in the news media. Because the media do a bad job. The context that makes “pundit” a slur is that most of the supposed experts lecturing people on today’s networks and magazines are as condescending as they are ignorant. The pundit caste brought shame on its name.
