Dichotomous

Aiyar was asked about a letter that a successor as sports minister, Ajay Maken, had written outlining Aiyar’s failures when he headed the ministry. Aiyar said the letter was of doubtful authenticity as “it contains words like ‘’ which I cannot believe that a BA (Pass) from Hansraj College (in Delhi University) would know”. The exact wording of Aiyar’s silly outburst is revealing:

St Stephen’s College, also in DU — could possibly have a half-decent vocabulary, and presumably could even muster the nerve to take the argument to him. For those who can find few ways to distinguish themselves, other than the circles or institutions of which they would claim to be exemplars, the truth that their elitism bears little relation to actual merit would be too world-shattering to be easily believed.

There’s no denying that Aiyar sometimes gets his laughs. But when he, and others, take school snobbery seriously, there’s no way to avoid looking silly.

A key is a method for determining the identity of something (like the name of a butterfly, a plant, a lichen, or a rock) by going through a series of choices that leads the user to the correct name of the item. means "divided in two parts".

At each step of the process of using the key, the user is given two choices; each alternative leads to another question until the item is identified. (It's like playing 20 questions.)

For example, a question in a key for trees might be something like, "Are the leaves flat or needle-like?" If the answer was "needle-like," then the next question might be something like, "Are the needles in a bunch or are they spread along the branch?" Eventually, when enough questions have been answered, the identity of the tree is revealed.

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