Manish Gupta

There's a reason 'Minister' rhymes with 'Sinister'
- Ajay Gahlaut

and as someone quipped even 'Barrister'

Did you know that SINISTER is the Opposite of DEXTER??!!@@!

Sinister (from Latin sinister—‘on the left-hand side’) evolved into its current meaning (evil or treacherous, especially in a mysterious way; threatening; ominous: a sinister glance; a sinister remark) as anything on the left-hand side was considered by Roman augurs to be unlucky, unfavourable, even injurious.

It is interesting to note that since a majority of people are right-handed (approximately 90 per cent to 93 per cent), we have, over many generations, come to believe that there is something not right in being left-handed. So much so that a left-handed person is often thought to be less skilled and, by some generous extension, even lacking social polish and tact. This is the basis of the word GAUCHE, which means clumsy, awkward, tactless, and lacking social polish. No points for guessing that gauche comes from French for ‘left’.

The opposite of sinister is Dexter (Latin dexter—‘on the right side’, also ‘favourable’) which developed a connotation of skill and gave birth to words like dexterous or dexterity, which mean skill or adroitness in using hands, body, and even mind (it was a stunning display of vocal dexterity, with music ranging from deeply sacred to very profane).

However, can we forget people who are equally skilled in the use of both hands? They are called ambidextrous (ambi—‘both’) implying thereby that they use both their hands skilfully, as if both were their right hands!

Hope Sinister, Dextrous, Dexterity, Ambidextrous, and Gauche shall now stay embedded in your Hippocampus, the seat of memory in your brain. Don't bother if Hippocampus is a sinister or a dexter... Humans (like other mammals) have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain.