Oh my word!! Hoard, Horde

Indians are known to hoard gold into the country. The Government of India is thinking of umpteen ways to prevent people from hoarding gold. There are hordes of people living without it.Hoard means to carefully collect or gather and guard something precious or valuable such as money, gold, food and objects of value; a hidden fund or supply; a cache. Hoard functions both as a noun and verb.

People hoard food in times of impending crisis. A miser’s hoard will be futile for he or she fails to share it with others. The walkers discovered a hoard of treasure when they streaked into a cave.The hoard of treasure went undetected for two hundred years at last when it was discovered by a sheer accident: when the floor was dug to

renovate. In modern days, food is hoarded up in different ways: loaded with preservatives, canned and tinned. Maneuvering a herd of sheep on the slopes of mountain in the Eastern Ghats, the shepherd stumbled upon a hoard of money in the form of coins, gold and silver. Mr Swamy is a hoarder of old books and newspapers.

Hoarding means billboard; a large board used for displaying advertisements about movies, events, products and services. Hoarding is a noun. It also refers to a temporary fence or board or any other structure erected around a building site or a house under renovation. Certain intersections of roads in the city are full of hoardings! Horde refers to a crowd, a large group of people, throng. But the word has ring of derogation.

Many vendors station themselves in places with hordes of people like political meetings, public meetings of popular politicians and others. Hordes of shoppers are the common sight at the malls in the cities. The cricket stadiums in the country are packed with hordes of cricket fans at the time of IPL matches.

There may not be fans or patronage for plays in Hyderabad but there are certainly hordes of movie watchers at almost every cinema hall. The coast in the state of Odisha will be seen with hordes of turtles, and it is a major attraction for hordes of tourists.

Economists may complain that Indians hoard gold and cause loss to precious foreign exchange reserves but they should also think about hordes of people in the country who are struggling to subsist on one square meal a day.