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Tuesday December 22, 2009

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pariah [puh-RAHY-uh]

noun

1. An outcast; a person who is despised and avoided.
2. An Untouchable (a member of the lowest Hindu caste in southern India).

• Although the film, with its home movies and family reminiscences, portrays him as a heroic crusader for justice, it is by no means a hagiography of a man who earned widespread contempt late in his career for defending pariahs.
  Stephen Holden, "Radical Lawyer's Appeal (and Rebuttal)", New York Times, Nov 13, 2009
• But the gas guzzlers are pariahs now among governments, which are forcing the fleet owners they regulate and own to purchase more environmentally friendly vehicles.
  Greg Keenan, "Ford confirms plant closing as GM invests", The Globe and Mail, Nov 10, 2009
• The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. With people of our own rank it is different. With us, prison makes a man a pariah.
  Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) An Irish playwright, poet and author. De Profundis (1905)

Origin of the Word

Pariah, approximately 1613, derives from Portuguese paria or directly from Tamil paraiyar, plural of paraiyan "drummer" (at festivals, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes of southern India), from parai "large festival drum."