By Murale Pillai
When in doubt, I don’t procrastinate. Or pretend everything is fine. Or go off on a working holiday, leaving the garden rank with grass, the air-conditioning blowing hot, repairs and leakages unattended to, the fridge not emptied out, and the bills unpaid.
Or leave the hardworking Asean maid in limbo, fretting whether I will come back in time to renew her contract or extend it by a month or two.
Instead, I check out the meaning of the word that’s sending my old head into a doubt cycle, which should never be confused with a debt cycle.
I want to know the origins of that troubling word, its changing use over time, and its current popularity as the preferred word to describe a particular situation in politics, parliamentary matters or public policy.
Or, for that matter, anything that affects the good people of this country, the rakyat.
Skulduggery origins
A few days ago, I had reason to doubt whether I was using the menacing-sounding word, “skulduggery”, in the right way, at least in my head.
I must admit this word has, for a long time now, conjured up images in my restless mind of skulls, daggers, Vikings in their horned helmets, the Jolly Roger flag with its skull and bones motif and dangerous Middle East extremists in their skullcaps.
And lo behold, to my utter surprise, the word “skulduggery” that had caused me much doubt and even more angst and unhappiness the past few days has an origin that took me to Scotland, where it started life as “sculduddery”.
Then came the second surprise: sculduddery means fornication or lewdity. Who would have thought of it, eh!
But strangely, both artificial intelligence and the dictionary could offer no explanation why scul + duddery adds up to the aforementioned meaning. Worse still, they didn’t even try.
Which set me thinking: Could it be related to manservants and lady-servants making it out in the scullery, the kitchen, when the Lord and Lady of the manor had gone to bed?
On that note, for the sake of politeness and political correctness, I wish to take that back: I should have instead written, “when the Lord and Lady of the Manor retired for the night.”
You see, “going to bed” had an altogether different meaning in those wicked times. And besides, as a country, we can correctly take pride in ourselves for having high morals in our public, private and political life.
Anyway, as I said before, I always check words out when in doubt and now the word sculduderry left me with more doubt than I could live with.
Now came the third bit of surprise after more checking. Apparently, sculduddery travelled across the Atlantic and, like always, whether it is Donald Trump or tariffs, it thoroughly corrupted itself in America and became the skulduggery that we know today, here and across the world.
Underhanded
So what exactly does skulduggery mean in today’s usage? I quote: underhanded, unscrupulous, secret or dishonest behaviour or activities.
With all this in mind and remembering a particularly vile period in our political history, which, pun intended, premiered in 1981, linguists will surely agree with me that a branch of sculduddery must have travelled to our country and become the skulduggery that bedevils our politics to this day.
It is now part and parcel of our body politic, no matter how much we shout out loud about morality, ethics and yes, reformation.
On that depressing note, allow me to predict that a hundred years from now, skulduggery may take on an altogether new meaning and be confined to situations we could have scarcely imagined.
Like perhaps: skullduggery – immoral and sinful behaviour that undermines public confidence in the key organs and institutions of state.
And for those who find the word skulduggery a bit too foreign, jarring and harsh, you can use the even more nicer sounding, jiggery-pokery which means about the same thing as in “the army’s intervention in politics was disguised by constitutional jiggery-pokery” or “the judge resorted to interpretative jiggery-pokery to salvage the clearly defective law.”
I can now go about my life less troubled by doubt. At least until the next crisis in our government, Parliament or the judiciary or perhaps a combination thereof, given our inability to keep them all apart to avoid even more skulduggery.
Or as I prefer now, more jiggery-pokery, which I checked out just now, is also of Scottish origin with a more comprehensive range of meaning, including hocus pocus, humbug, bambosh, baloney, bunkum, hogwash, flapdoodle, rubbish, hooey, hot air and poppycock. That will be enough.
Yes, surely, enough is enough.
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.