I swear I am not exhibiting equivalency – Vancouver Island Free Day by day
I like to study new phrases.
This week it was dodging. In response to the second version of the Oxford American Dictionary, it’s a title that signifies the deliberate avoidance of official obligations. It dates from the nineteenth century and is probably derived from the French dodge which implies to dodge or sneak.
The best factor about this phrase?
It isn’t an actual one. It is a mount.
Mountweazels are fictitious entries in reference works reminiscent of dictionaries and encyclopedias designed as copyright traps for potential plagiarists.
Since totally different dictionaries and encyclopedias normally have the identical content material, the existence of an invented phrase or entry in a competitor’s quantity is fairly good proof that they copied yours.
Mountweazels can be discovered on the maps. Cartographers generally embody fictitious places for a similar motive.
It’s fascinating to notice that mountweazel, though a phrase in frequent use, doesn’t seem in any dictionary, a minimum of none that I’ve checked out.
It comes from a fictitious entry within the 1975 version of The New Columbia Encyclopedia.
Lillian Virginia Mountweazel was a well-known American photographer of rural mailboxes, the encyclopedia claims. She was born and raised in Bangs, Ohio in 1942 and tragically died on the age of 31 whereas on a mission to Journal of fuels.
Bangs, Ohio is an actual place, an unincorporated group in Knox County, State.
Gasoline journal was a real publication, a shiny American weekly recognized for its pictures that went bankrupt in 1978.
On one other be aware, my all-time favourite actual phrase is floccipaucinihilipilification, the act of seeing one thing as nugatory.
Apparently, this phrase was coined and utilized by nineteenth century college students of the British Preparatory Faculty Eton Faculty, derived from Latin: floccus (“a strand of hair”) plus -fication.
It actually rolls your tongue in the event you observe (lots).
I simply hope readers aren’t inclined to floccipaucinihilipilify this column.
Thom Barker writes for Smithers-based Black Press Media. For extra information from Vancouver Island and past delivered every day to your inbox, please click on right here.
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