The Ideology of Damar

“Damar” is the word I use a lot, and many people have associated it to my presence. Recently, during the Royal Court Theatre’s Playwriting Workshop I taught a couple of our British mentors how to say “Damar”. They were utterly amused at the sound of that word, along with a couple of other words that sounded quite dramatic. What is the origin of damar?

Damar, is a word strictly used by Jordanian youth and part of their hip vocabulary in the late 90’s. It is now revived by the fact that I hate this millennium, and the upsurge of a nostalgic-retro desire to live my early teens (which by the way, I do not remember). Damar, is word that varies according to context. It is in fact a syntactic unit that can be placed in different positions in the sentence – according to your taste. Damar means an extremity: a state of utter destruction, however; according to the Amino version of damar, it has four levels:

  • Damar
  • Kharab Byoot
  • Ashla2
  • Geta3
  • For those of you who don’t understand what’s above, it’s tough to explain. Those expressions are hardly rooted in the Jordanian slang. You can say that damar is the least damaging of all degrees of destruction, wonder, and disgust. While, Geta3 is thy ultimate expression of destruction, detestation, and awe. Damar is by the way an alternative to the word “Nice”, which we previously discussed. It is dramatic and humorous – once you actually use it in historical contexts. For example, take Julius Caesar’s case, what if his last word when he was being stabbed was: Damar! Ah! I’m not sure if you can share the fun of this, but try to picture utterly serious and morbid cases in which you could insert damar in the conversation, it keeps me amused for hours.

    4 Responses to The Ideology of Damar

    1. omar says:

      AMINO! Finally you’re back. hahaha I love how you explained the history of the word DAMAR. But you forgot to mention the noun derived “Damaration”. haha.

    2. Moey says:

      nice header amino. meen did it for you

    3. Amino says:

      Omar… Damar is the noun :)

      Moey, a cherished friend of mine :)

    4. plasticpam says:

      damaaaar :P

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