When it comes to English, you certainly do not try to teach the master - Shashi Tharoor. Unfortunately enough, a Twitter user learnt this lesson the hard way after he dared to point out an error in one of his recent tweets and got schooled by the Congress leader himself.
The incident transpired when Tharoor put out a tweet on Tuesday, January 5, suggesting the cancellation of Republic Day festivities in the wake concerns regarding the spread of the new strain of the novel coronavirus which was discovered in the United Kingdom in December 2020. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's India visit has already been called off keeping in view the highly-transmissible natured of the mutated variant of the fatal virus.
Therefore, taking to the micro-blogging website, Tharoor wrote, "Now that @BorisJohnson's visit to India this month has been cancelled due to the #COVIDSecondWave, & we don't have a Chief Guest on #RepublicDay, why not go one step farther & cancel the festivities altogether? Getting crowds to cheer the parade as usual would be irresponsible."
Twitter user does the unthinkable
While others expressed their opinions on Tharoor's suggestion, a Twitter user went to a different tangent altogether as he probably thought that the politician, who is widely regarded for his impeccable command over the English language, mistakenly wrote "farther" instead of "further" in the tweet.
However, he certainly understood how big a deal it was to even try pointing out an error in Tharoor's English. "*further. Can't imagine I am doing this to The Shashi Tharoor. " wrote the Twitter user, completely unaware of the schooling that would come his way.
Tharoor did not waste much time in making that person regret what he had done. Explaining that the word "farther" can be used in multiple contexts, the Lok Sabha MP advised the Twitter user to improve his grammar.
"Tut-tut. The word "farther" means "at or to a greater distance." Besides physical distance, "farther" can also refer to "a more advanced point" or "to a greater extent." See http://grammars.com for more details," replied Tharoor.
However, ironically, this particular tweet by Tharoor did have an error which he acknowledged himself and corrected. He had misspelt the website's name.
"http://Grammarly.com. Wretched autocorrect rebaptised the site after I typed it!" wrote Tharoor.
