Fake Dictionary Words
It’s interesting to read this article about fake words inserted into dictionaries to detect their wholescale plagiarism:
A call was placed to Erin McKean, the editor-in-chief of the second edition of NOAD. Upon being presented with the majority opinion, McKean confirmed that “esquivalience” was a fabricated word. She said that Oxford had included it in NOAD’s first edition, in 2001, to protect the copyright of the electronic version of the text that accompanied most copies of the book. “The editors figured, We’re all working really hard, so let’s put in a word that means ‘working really hard.’ Nothing materialized, so they thought, Let’s do the opposite.” An editor named Christine Lindberg came up with “esquivalience.” The word has since been spotted on Dictionary.com, which cites Webster’s New Millennium as its source. “It’s interesting for us that we can see their methodology,” McKean said. “Or lack thereof. It’s like tagging and releasing giant turtles.”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at 1:09 pm and is tagged with christine lindberg, giant turtles, dictionary words, noad, new millennium, majority opinion, plagiarism, electronic version, dictionaries, turtles, methodology, oxford, editors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on December 10th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
I think thats a brilliant idea. I would of thought that the editors would want to maintain the integrity of the dictionary and not do something like that. It seems like a real smart business decision.