wallah

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The Word of the Day for May 26 is:

wallah   \WAH-luh\   noun
     : a person who is associated with a particular work or who performs a 
specific duty or service -- usually used in combination

Example sentence:
     "Location, location and location. That's what it's all about, trumpet the 
real-estate wallahs." (Tony Baker, _The Advertiser_, August 3, 2005)

Did you know?
     "Wallah" comes from the Hindi suffix "-vala," meaning "one in charge." 
Like its Hindi counterpart, "wallah" is commonly used in combination with other 
nouns. The first use of "wallah" appeared as "lootywallah" in a narrative 
penned by Officer Innes Munro describing his time deployed on the Coromandel 
Coast of India in the 1780s. "Looty," or "lootie," was a noun sometimes applied 
to a member of a band of marauders or robbers. In the narrative, Munro used the 
term to describe looting cavalrymen. In current writing, "wallah" is typically 
accompanied by words like "office" or "marketing."





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