We love a good urban legend. When we're forwarded dubious emails about missing children or political scare tactics and smears, we make a beeline for Snopes. So when we first heard about a mistake that let a fake "ghost word" slip into "Webster's Dictionary" for five years, we smelled a rat.
According to the story, the word "dord" was introduced to dictionary compilers accidentally, with a consultant's note reading "D or d, cont/density" -- meaning that "density" should be added to the list of words that "D" could represent. One misunderstanding and two removed spaces later, and "dord" was a new synonym for "density."
The story of dord is true, and it isn't the only fictitious entry to be found in reference materials. Some words, like zzxjoanw, are hoaxes, inserted for their authors' amusement. Other false entries are intentionally included as copyright traps, so that anyone stealing information will also unwittingly copy the identifiable fictional parts. Copyright traps have long been used by mapmakers to protect their work with made-up streets or even whole fictional towns.
Encyclopedia-makers craft biographies for notable people who have never existed, like the (now) famous Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer and photographer of rural mailboxes whose (fake) name has come to represent the practice of fictitious entries. "The New Oxford American Dictionary" even fessed up to a recent mountweazel: "esquivalience," meaning "the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities."
At the risk of being accused of esquivalience, and no matter what our beloved Snopes might say, we respectfully choose to retain ghost words like dord and zzxjoanw. We find them perfectly cromulent.
Suggested Sites...
- Snopes Fact Check: Language - the scoop on word origins and other language-related urban legends.
- Esquivalience and Other Mountweazels - a look at some common falsehoods in reference materials.
- Copyright Easter Eggs - an overview of copyright traps on maps, with some notable examples.
- Wikipedia: Fictitious Entry - but how do you know this one is real?
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