Taakeedein Does Not Really Mean Warning



Well, I was searching if anyone really had given the meaning of taakeedein on the web and was disappointed to see that it was there, but it wasn't the right meaning.

A little more search told me that it was not just Miss Malini who went wrong, even the producer Anubhav Sinha went on to say that Taaqeed meant Warning and worse, warning in Urdu was taakeed. My guess is this is yet another case of falling in love with a fancy sounding Urdu word without knowing its exact meaning.

[The last such case I remember was dabangg, which arbaaz said meant fearless, though it's not the exact meaning of Dabangg. However, fearless was not too far from Dabangg. Also, dabangg is a Hindi word.]

No, there is absolutely nothing that Urdu could do about it. It's a beautiful language with words that sound just fascinating. But it's people who need to know what the word really means before using them at such big level.

Let me put my case forward.

First of all, I had an idea of what taaqeed/ taakeed means. But to avoid any doubt, I opened my dictionary [Oxford, Hindi-English] which had the word since it used to be kind of common. I remember hearing the word and some of its forms from my grandmother. Anyway, the dictionary says:

1. strict instruction; demand, request.
2. compulsion, coercion

taakeed karna: To enjoin, to instruct, to caution.

[Yep, finally the last one gets close.]

The second one, an Urdu Hindi dictionary says:

ताक़ीद - कोई बात ज़ोर देकर कहना, हठ, किसी बात का हुक्म देना।

i.e., Taaqeed - To say something with an emphasize, persistence/obstinacy, to order something.

And if that was not enough, checking with Google Translate [which is not a very reliable resource for tough words], Emphasis, force, stress when you try Urdu-English, and 'reminder' when you try Hindi-English.

As I said in the Explanation for Taaqeed, if you have to pay someone and he comes and asks you for the money repeatedly, he's doing taakeedein. To me, it's more of demand, less of warning. If he gets a gun, it'd be a different case though. ;)

If you still are confused about the word, you can search more, or simpler, go on to believe it means warning, but we've warned you, it does not.

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