You must not die when ‘electrocuted’

Ochichi

NAIROBI: If you approach an academic to seek his opinion about this or that issue, you shouldn’t be surprised if he reaches his bookshelf, and piles on his table a number of titles on what you considered an easy issue for an intellectual to tackle without any reference. To get useful and reliable information, you can’t depend on a single source – that is the message. Before you reach a conclusion, you’ve to ask yourself: what does so and so say about this matter? What about this other authority? And how about ... In other words you have no option but to consult widely. This is the reason academics warn: Beware of someone who uses one source of information.

Last week, April 9, probably the columnist of Mark my Word, Philip Ochieng, relied on either a single book or only his knowledge to draw the conclusion that the word ‘electrocuted’ only means ‘to be killed by electricity’. According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, “to electrocute” means “to injure or kill somebody by passing electricity through their body.” The book provides the example, “Six people were drowned; five died from electrocution.” The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English says, “if someone is electrocuted, they are injured or killed by electricity passing through their body.” The Macmillan Dictionary notes (that) the word means to kill or injure someone with electricity. And the Collins COBUILD Dictionary agrees that “if someone is electrocuted, they are accidentally killed or badly injured when they touch something connected to a source of electricity.”