WORD OF THE DAY: NABOB

Did You Know?

In India’s Mogul Empire, founded in the 16th century, provincial governors carried the Urdu title of nawāb. In 1612, Captain Robert Coverte published a report of his “discovery” of “the Great Mogoll, a prince not till now knowne to our English nation.” The Captain informed the English-speaking world that “An earle is called a Nawbob,” thereby introducing the English version of the word. Nabob, as it later came to be spelled, gained its extended sense of “a prominent person” in the 18th century, when it was applied sarcastically to British officials of the East India Company returning home after amassing great wealth in Asia. But the word was most famously used by Vice President Spiro Agnew, in a 1970 speech written by William Safire, when he referred to critical members of the news media as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Merriam-Webster Dictionary