I Attest the following

This is the age of the WEB 2.0. Any youth who doesn't have an account in Facebook, Orkut or its ilk is considered un-savvy as per current social trends. I myself have an account on Orkut and Facebook, but at the same time I avoid invitations coming from many other social networking sites (the most irritating one is the one which reads "XYZ tagged you", what's that, am not cattle). Orkut is the one with which I am most comfortable, because of many reasons, and use it quite frequently. For many of the Orkutter, one of the prestigious things is to have numerous testimonials a.k.a testi's under one's belt. But one thing which I believe that most of the Orkutters, and even common folks, are unaware is the word Testimonial's etymology. The word Testimonial, and others like Testament, Attest and Testify, is derived from the word "testis", a part of male anatomy. Offended? Disgusted? or Appalled? If any of the foregoing, you may cease to read further.

Well, I found it interesting when I learned about this factual trivia from the book "Facts and Trivia" by Sir Isaac Asimov, 6 years back during my college days. Also, my current google-research provides me with some more trivia. Here's one of them, it is stated that under ancient Roman laws, no man can be considered as evidence or witness unless one verifies one's virility, and hence testify in legal matters, and while testifying one has to hold one's "virility"; that reminds me of my school days when we used to swear to prove our point, maa kasam this or maa kasama that. And interestingly, the word “detest” means to dislike intensely, and implicitly, to hate to the bottom of one's ... you know that, right? This shows, how male chauvinistic society it was, legally you couldn't have testified if you were to belong to the fairer sex, which meant women hardly had any legal rights. But now, the world is changing, for the good. One doesn't need that male anatomy to be a witness, neither one has to show one's virility to attest, just a rubber stamp is sufficient. Having said that, whenever, in Orkut, I see a testimonial from a female to her male friend; or when any of my friends asks me write a testi for him/her, my mind just smirks sheepishly. Probably, the smirk is due to some weird imagination. Imagine, had the present been something like the ancient Roman Era, our female friends would have been deprived of the privilege and also for every testimonial from one to ones friend, one might find oneself in a very compromising situation. Too much imagination! OK let's stop it here only.

That's all what I wanted to blog and pass on the trivial fact; I hope you find it informative, but not offensive. I would like to close this blog with a quote from a letter published in the feminist Ms. magazine:

“I protest the use of the word ‘testimony’ when referring to a woman’s statements, because its root is ‘testes’which has nothing to do with being a female. Why not use ‘ovarimony’?”