Verify Your Vocabulary Before You Publish
The New Yorker has just revealed a fake word in the New Oxford American Dictionary. Apparently, this has been a fairly common practice among encyclopedia and dictionary publishers in order to determine if their content is being copied.
Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and you’ll find an entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled “Flags Up!†Mountweazel, the encyclopedia indicates, was born in Bangs, Ohio, in 1942, only to die “at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.â€
Mountweazel never existed and neither does the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word esquivalience (def. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities). It looks like the NOAD’s efforts have paid off at least in part - Dictionary.com has been caught serving the word up to its visitors.
Beware those seeking to spruce up their publications with a trip to the thesaurus! You might end up “Mountweazeled”.
Clearly the word exists since you are making reference to it here. If it didn’t exist, how could we even know about it? (I can post the ontological proof later) Words typically arise out of necessity and believe me, this is the word I have been waiting for. It describes why, exactly at this moment, I am using my time to write this comment. My typical afternoon is the essence of esquivalience. Many words have been invented in this manner. Take for example “incommensurability”, coined by the science philosopher Thomas Kuhn. He made that up. Now I use it quite often. Words are fun that way.
Comment on November 16, 2005 @ 5:27 pm
I checked dictionary.com for the made-up word and it’s no longer there. What consequences will dictionary.com face for this unathorized copying?
Comment on November 17, 2005 @ 10:43 pm
I doubt Dictionary.com would be prosecuted. I think the New Oxford American Dictionary has embarrassed Dictionary.com enough, but you never know - they might decide to take it to court.
Comment on November 18, 2005 @ 9:49 am
I have loved using dictionary.com and now I know whom to thank (OAD).
Comment on November 18, 2005 @ 10:50 pm
[...] Secularization is defined as “the activity of changing something (art or education or society or morality etc.) so it is no longer under the control or influence of religion” according to Dictionary.com (who knows where the definition really came from). Others have described secularization as the pulling back of religion from the mainstream - sort of a creation of separation or gap making between religion and the world. For our purposes, we will speak of secularization as a separation of the Christian from non-Christian surroundings. [...]
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