It’s the day after.

As I’m writing this several days before the election, I cannot predict what just happened, but there is a group of election forecasters who did, or at least thought they did. I’m talking about pundits, of course.

This plethora of professional pontificators descended upon our cable news shows, and, in true “talking-head” form, commented, critiqued and generally thought out loud about our crazy political season for months. I must thank my brother Gideon for suggesting this retroactively-timely word.

Pundit comes to us from the Hindi word pandit, and thus from the Sanskrit pandita — or panditah — meaning a “learned man,” or simply “learned” or “scholar,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary; note that Sanskrit is the very old, classical literary language of India.

Anyway, a pundit in the original sense of the word — as borrowed almost directly into English when, well, the English held India as a colony in various stages from the 18th through the first half of the 20th century — was literally a scholar skilled in Sanskrit, Indian philosophy and law, sometimes as a Hindu priest or teacher, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

To be called a pundit, then, was a sign of respect.

An example of the word in this usage can be found in John Fryer’s 1698 A New Account of East India and Persia, a book of natural history and local medical tradition that was the result of nearly a decade’s worth of travel and observation by a British doctor in the employ of the East India Company, as stated by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The line reads, “Into Places of Trust and Authority he puts only Brachmins, or their Substitutes, viz. Pundits ... for Physicians.”

Pundit’s not-so-flattering definition as a public, self-styled “expert” appeared later, in the 1800s.

The first example of this meaning in written English can be found in 1816, in The Grand Master; or Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan — yes, that’s the actual title — by a certain “Sam Quiz,” who, as near as I and the Dictionary of National Biography can place him, was the wide-ranging English journalist and writer William Frederick Deacon (1799–1845), known for his parodies and early championing of a then-young author named Charles Dickens.

The line in question reads, “For English pundets condescend Th’ observatory to ascend.”

By this point, the piddling pundits of the punditocratic punditocracy have pundited their punditly put political punditry — and yes, all of those variations of pundit are real.

I know some of you might be disappointed, and others elated, but whatever you are, I wish you the best. Until next time, cheers!

Reach reporter Will Mari at features@dailyuw.com.