the word's origins might be

significantly older. Some etymologists posit that the English word pundit-which today generally refers to a political commentator-can be traced to the second millennium BC and means "a learned Hindu versed in Sanskrit."

Sanskrit, one of the earliest Indo-European languages, is a famously complex tongue rich in its use ofpuns-not for humorous effect, but for the pun's perceived power to reveal divine truth beyond the surface of any given word. In The Secret Life of Words: How Englisli Became English, Henry Hitchings writes that

Sanskrit itself means synthesized, and suggests that it reflects a process of putting together, allowing "the boundaries between individual words to blur into a fluid yarn of syllables."