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#146987 08/28/05 02:25 PM
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Faldage Offline OP
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esquivalience—n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities . . . late 19th cent.: perhaps from French esquiver, “dodge, slink away.”

Entry from the Oxford American Dictionary for the purpose of foiling copyright violaters. Read all about it in the August 29 issue of the New Yorker magazine:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050829ta_talk_alford


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>> Entry from the Oxford American Dictionary for the purpose of foiling copyright violaters.

Hogwash


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Methinks the NOAD defeats its own purpose; neither esquivalience nor esquivarience is now a mountweazel. For that matter, neither is mountweazel.


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Publishers of maps do similar things. Many years ago a friend of mine who lived in Michigan at the time sent me the highway map published by the State of Michigan. Just south of the Ohio state line were two fake towns, goblu and beatosu. Steve said the inclusion of these two towns was for copyright purposes.



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the oEd online has an exhaustively updated M-section -- no mountweazel, not even as a nonce-wd.

now, to wwftd-ize esquivalience without incurring the wroth of the oAd...

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>>no mountweazel, not even as a nonce-wd.

But, from the referenced New Yorker Article:

"[t]he remaining three hundred and sixty words were then vetted with a battery of references. Six potential Mountweazels emerged."


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now, to wwftd-ize esquivalience without incurring the wroth of the oAd...

I do believe Faldage was *secretly hoping you'd try that.

Good to see you back, btw, Wortmeister.


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>Six potential Mountweazels emerged.

if 'mountweazel' is recognized as the term for this specific publication ploy, it isn't acknowledged by OED (or W3) -- that's all I meant.
- ron (lexicographically) obvious

which begs the question <ecch>, does the OAD have an online presence??


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does the OAD have an online presence?? Well, yes: the ghost of Lord Mountweazel, obviously...


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>> which begs the question <ecch>, does the OAD have an online presence??

Or -- if I understand you -- as Socrates might have put it, 'is a word a word because it's in the OAD, or is it in the OAD because it's a word?'


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