28 January 2013

aumildar

[aw-mil-DAHR]

noun

1. A manager or agent.
2. A collector of revenue.

Origin:

Aumildar comes from the Hindi word amaldār, a combination of the Persian word ʿamal meaning ‘work’ and the suffix -dar meaning ‘agent’.

Example sentence:

The culprit, on suspicion, is hurried away before the aumildar, and after a few loose questions regarding his criminality…
— Ya Ding, The Earth Sings

Today’s aphorism

‘There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes’.

– William Makepeace Thackeray

On this day

28 January 1968 – 4 hydrogen bombs are lost when the B-52 bomber that was carrying them, crashes near Thule, Greenland. The bombs are eventually located, but it took nine months to clear the area of radiation.

28 January 1986 – the space shuttle, Challenger, explodes moments after lift-off, killing all seven astronauts on board, including Christa MacAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, who was scheduled to deliver a lesson from outer-space as part of the ‘Teacher in Space’ project.