Cheat, fool or mislead?

Wordsmith / FRANK KRISHNER


Recently two truly sensational events occurred in Bihar. The first was the crowning success of the ‘Super 30’ experiment. The second was that three students who were coached by the Super 30 team accepted payment to endorse a commercial coaching institute. These commercial organisations tried to deceive the public. The Super 30 teachers, stung by the ingratitude and dishonesty of these students decided to discontinue the project.

It is said that that you can fool all the people for some time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.

Fool means to make someone believe something is true or real when it actually isn’t. You may fool someone just for fun. People fool each other on April Fool’s Day. I fooled the cook by putting salt in the sugar bowl. It is wrong to fool another person by making a promise you don’t expect to keep.

Cheat means to fool a person by doing something he or she doesn’t notice. Ravi cheated Stuti out of her piece of cake by eating it when she wasn’t looking. It is dishonest to cheat at a game or cheat on a test. The three Super-30 students tried to cheat when they pretended to be from other institutes. Did they think that their teachers wouldn’t notice?

You mislead someone when you cause him or her to go in the wrong direction or away from the truth. If you are offered something free and later find that you have to pay for it, someone is misleading you. The low price of this shirt misled me into thinking it was a real bargain, but I later found out that the fabric was of poor quality.

Trick means to fool by cheating or misleading. A magician tricks his audience.

Deceive and hoodwink mean ‘give a false impression in order to fool and confuse people’. You deceive another person when you lie to him. The rogue coaching institutes tried to deceive the Chief Minister by passing off the super 30 students as their own. Hoodwink is a less formal expression. I was hoodwinked into believing that this glass stone was a diamond!

Bluff means to fool someone by pretending to know more than you really do. At a recent interview, some students said that they regularly read Shakespeare, but you could tell that they were bluffing.


Learn-a-word

Dilemma

Strictly speaking a dilemma is a choice between two (or more) undesirable alternatives. Administrators are faced with the dilemma of cutting public services or increasing taxes. It is incorrect to use ‘dilemma’ when you really mean ‘problem’. Whether to choose ‘Arts’ or ‘Science’ for a graduation course isn’t a dilemma, it’s just a perplexing situation.

wordscore: unscramble these words [they all have something in common]

GAMLE FLERICK FASLH BAME

[Last week’s solution: Expert, Crack, Fluent, Adroit]


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