Allusionist 7 Mountweazel transcript

Hear this episode at theallusionist.org/mountweazel.

This is The Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, pan for linguistic gold. Coming up in today's show are revelations that will shatter the belief you had in the one thing you thought you could trust in this chaotic world.

To warm-up, here's some word history. "Poodle", jaunty word for a jaunty kind of dog, and, because poodles are water dogs, their name came from the German word "pudel", meaning "splash". It shares a root with "puddle". Bonus dog etymology, "basset hounds" and the word "bass" shared the same linguistic root, which is the Latin "bassus", meaning "low". Because a basset hound is low, right? To the ground, not morally. 

On with the show, and…

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HZ: …a couple of weeks ago, I received an email from listener Eley Williams which basically said, "Hey, Helen, you know all those dictionaries you love and revere so much? Well, they're riddled with lies." Admittedly, she put it in much more polite terms, but she did say she's finishing a doctorate covering fake words that are deliberately listed in dictionaries. Shocked and intrigued, I had to find out more from Eley. Just as soon as I'd regained consciousness and got up off the floor. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: I mean, I'm exactly the same. You kind of approach a dictionary, not even tentatively, it is, if it's in the dictionary, it is true, and that truth is pretty much immobile in between editions. Dictionaries kind of take on this weird, almost priest-like role on the bookshelf, and then they're sort of preserved. You kind of want it to be immutable, really, otherwise what's the point? But the idea of a word actually being looked up and either it being false, the definition, or if the word itself not to exist in reality at all, is what got me into this, this kind of... The idea of the deceit behind it. And also the idea, therefore, of a lexicographer lying.

HZ: Do you think it was very hard for them to lie, given that usually they have to concentrate on presenting the truth in as objective a way as possible?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, well, that's objectivity, but, I mean, it's the most kind of interesting and enjoyable, looking at these false words. What I really enjoy about the false words is that often you don't know who it was that made this up. You don't know what was the purpose for its creation. 

HZ: These hoax terms are now known as "mountweazels", after probably the most famous hoax term, "Lillian Virginia Mountweazel", a made-up person who appeared in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: On the same page as Mount Rushmore and Mussorgsky, so, you know, in good company. The entry is: "Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942-73..."

HZ: Oh, so a short life. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Wait for it, a tragic short life, peppered with intrigue. "An American photographer born in Bangs, Ohio..." - bit of foreshadowing, there. "Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964. She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes. The last group was exhibited extensively abroad, and published as "Flags Up!" in 1972. Mounweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.". 

Shed a tear, but someone here has had such fun, first of all, just making nonsense up, really, but the idea of something being published called "Flags Up!", as in flagging something up, the idea of this person working for "Combustibles magazine" and dying in an explosion, having been born in "Bangs, Ohio", I mean... Someone has put idle thought, but thought, into creating this little falsehood. This kind of interesting character, but, crucially, someone who's not too interesting. They couldn't be flicking through the dictionary in order to find Mountweazel, because she doesn't exist, nor do you really want it to necessarily be too obvious that it's fake, because often these words are included in dictionaries as copyright traps. 

HZ: Ah. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: So, say you, Helen Zaltzman, you are writing a dictionary and I'm writing a dictionary. It would be quite easy for me just to look at what you've come up with, and with a little bit of twiddling and finessing of some definitions, mine would be very similar to yours. If, however, you'd inserted a false entry into your dictionary and you saw that it occurred in mine, you'd be, it'd be quite clear that I've just made off of your copy. So sections contain these false words as little snares, almost, to catch potential piracy out. 

HZ: But some people were determined to catch the traps before the traps caught them. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: In 2005, in the New Oxford American Dictionary, an investigator asked whether they were any of these mountweazels, and the response came back there was one and it was in the "E" section. So the investigator then whittled down a list of five potential candidates, of which words he thought or she thought might be the potential false word. The first one was "earth loop". That's two words, which is a noun, "electrical British term for a ground loop". 

HZ: Plausible. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Plausible. You think so? OK. The second one is "EGD". They're initials, which is "a technology or system that integrates a computer display with a pair of eyeglasses". An abbreviation of "eyeglass display".

HZ: And now there's Google Glass. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: So the future is here. 

HZ: Yeah. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: There's then "electrofish", which is a verb, "ELSF", "esquivalience", and "euro creep" is the final one. And this is the kind of shortlist of potential falsehoods, and this is sent off to a number of lexicographers and editors and linguistic experts in order to kind of sound out, or flush out, which was the fake word that was there, and most of them agreed on which one was fake. And it turns out that it was "esquivalience", and the definition for that word, noun, is, "The wilful avoidance of one's official responsibilities, late 19th century, perhaps from the French 'esquive'..." - my French is not great - "...to dodge or slink away". And again, that's fitting, right? So the idea of dodging your responsibilities as a lexicographer by planting this fake word. But this was very much a word set there as a copyright trap.

It's interesting, because you can track, given that's 2005 and the content of so many dictionaries is now online, you can track quite easily whether it has then been copied without understanding that it's fake. So it turned up on dictionary.com as if it was a real word, and it's just, yeah, it's interesting to see how fake words or false words or fictitious entries do disseminate so quickly, when you haven't got a kind of editorial probity, or you don't necessarily research too well, by the fact of the word and its etymology, etc., it's come from.

HZ: Indeed, etymology, or rather lack of etymology, can be a dead giveaway. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: This appeared in a wartime edition of Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary, and it's an entry for a bird, it's "jungftak", a noun, "A Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing on the right side, and the female only one wing on the left side. Instead of the missing wings, the male had a hook of bones and the female an eyelet of bones, and it was by uniting hook and eye that they were enabled to fly. Each one alone had to remain on the ground." 

HZ: So romantic. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: So lovely. Isn't it great? 

HZ: It's like those broken heart necklaces. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yes. As with the mountweazel, it shows this almost concern for narrative, with the entry, and how it's been framed, and how the characters are operating within it, as if it was a little short story or almost poetic conceit. It falls down so much as an entry because, as far as I've been able to tell, there's no etymological validity to "jungftak" as being Persian. It obviously is ridiculous. It puts me in mind of those cryptozoological pictures actually, where they kind of sew bits of 18 different animals together and then claim it's some underwater alien creature. So it's got the head of a walrus figure, and the feet of a penguin, and all the rest of it, and it just doesn't make any sense, and it looks so strange, but if you're looking to fool the right person it'll pass scrutiny. So yeah, it's a kind of tender portrait of something that really doesn't exist, that has no place in the dictionary, and almost seems kind of at odds to what the dictionary stand for, but so lovely just to be there. 

HZ: So how many copyright traps are there in the average dictionary? 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Well, lexicography, the world of lexicography, that dark shady underworld, tends to be quite quiet about them, obviously, because otherwise it would then undermine them even being there. So, I mean, the most famous one is probably "mountweazel". There's a cyclopaedia, the Appleton's Cyclopaedia of 1888-1889, and that had over 200 false entries, it's estimated, which makes you wonder why not just list it as a work of fiction? But they're very subtly incorrect, but intended to be incorrect, and it's posited that that's because the contributors were paid per word. So after a while they just thought, "Well, if it's a dollar a word, I can just make up another word and shove it in there." 

HZ: Dictionaries have always been fallible. Not just because of human greed, but also egos, filing blunders, and household pests. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: First draft of the Oxford English Dictionary, when it was first published, when they were moving around all the different slips of paper that were going to go into the final proofs, the entry for "bondmaid" just fell down the back of a cabinet and so wasn't included. Just there were errors like that. And some proofs were found made into a nest for rats, and there was some debate about whether Murray, who was the first editor of the OED, whether they should include an entry on "appendicitis", because at the time it wasn't seen as a necessarily relevant word, and it was a bit too specific, and not necessarily useful as a word for the dictionary at that time. So it didn't go in. But then in following years, but quite soon after, one of the royal family had appendicitis, and it was appearing in all these newspaper cuttings, but it wasn't in the dictionary. So you did feel a bit like kicking yourself, they just got the timing wrong there. 

HZ: For lexicographers to consider including a word in a dictionary, there must be several examples of that word appearing in writing. Therefore, presumably, if a hoax word is discovered and then written about enough, it could end up back in the dictionary as a legitimate entry. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: So I think "esquivalience" and "mountweazel", they have entered the lexicon, really, to mean "a fictitious entry". They were both quick to almost weed them out, I think, because once the hoax is exposed, it loses its destiny as a trap. Once you've discovered one, you kind of... Do you want to declare that you found it? Because it's declaring something obsolete. It's kind of taking away from the joy of the reading of it. You know, people get very personally attached to particular editions, and I think if one edition seems to be somehow flawed... But is it a flaw? I guess I find it... Not charming, because it is so unscrupulous, but it brings a real character to a dictionary, if you know that it's got these little nudges and winks that are there for the right reader. A reader with too much time on their hands. 

HZ: It shows you the human behind the exercise. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Exactly. Exactly. And I do, that really is just the wonderful thing about lexicography, these little human details. 

HZ: Stay vigilant for human mischief in all sorts of different works of reference. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: I'm sure you've heard of "trap streets'' on maps, which are those false cartographical streets and rivers, tributaries, and anything on a map basically that's included there for the same reason as these fake words, to act as a copyright trap, so if it's replicated on a different map, they'll know that it's been copied. Which does mean you get some poor hikers trying to find a road that's very clearly marked on a map that doesn't actually exist. Grove's Dictionary is a musical tome, I think that's the title, has a couple of good ones. Full of composers and the rest of it. 

HZ: It's everywhere. Can't even trust Grove's. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Mountweazels popping up, it's like whack-a-mole. 

HZ: I think what we've learned is you cannot trust anything. 

ELEY WILLIAMS: Trust nothing, trust no one. 

HZ: This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Many thanks to Eley Williams for bringing mountweazels to my attention, even though it has been emotionally and intellectually devastating. You'll find me on Twitter and Facebook at @AllusionistShow. There are links to Eley's website at theallusionist.org/mountweazel, where you can also see a beautiful illustration by Eley's sister Catherine of the fake bird, the "junkftak". 

Your randomly-selected word from the dictionary today is…

Osculum. Noun. A large aperture in a sponge through which water is expelled.

Or is it, dictionary? I don't know what to believe any more.