Word of the Week: Mountweazel

Mountweazel: Any made-up word included in a dictionary or other reference book as a copyright trap.

"Mountweazel" got its name from a fake entry in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. According to a 2005 New Yorker article on copyright traps, Lillian Virginia Mountweazel was purported to be:

 

a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled “Flags Up!” Mountweazel, the encyclopedia indicates, was born in Bangs, Ohio, in 1942, only to die “at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”

In the second edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary, the mountweazel is esquivalience, whose fake definition is "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities." Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of that dictionary,

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.”

 

A similar tradition of deliberate falsifying exists, for the same reason, in mapmaking. "Map traps" are sometimes called "bunnies" (after the find-the-hidden-bunny drawings popular in the 1930s) or simply "hooks." Read more about map traps here (and be sure to read the comments).

Hat tip to Karen at Verbatim for remembering the New Yorker article and mentioning it in a comment here last week.

Comments

[Jessica]

Very interesting. My husband and I were just discussing today whether there's some kind of trade dress analog for this concept - essentially, a product feature that looks functional (and thus would be technically okay for a competitor to copy) but that in reality provides no functional benefit at all. I'm not sure it's the dead giveaway evidence of copying that the Mountweazel is.

And as for Ms. Mountweazel's untimely demise, I can only quote the words of Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins: "You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported."

[Barry Nordin]

In the 1980s, I worked for the company that had printed the RI state map for several decades. My job included unofficially verifying yearly changes to the map because the company didn't want to embarrass the state by printing an error-filled map. Several times I mentioned to the state official in charge that, despite being a life-long resident, I could not find two towns in northern RI during my travels. After brushing me off for several years, he finally admitted the two places did exist but were under fifty feet of water. They had been flooded when the state reservoir was built in the early 1900s and used as copyright traps.

[Nick Tata]

This is quite an eye-opener. While I've seen watermarks on photos and heard about software that tracks downloaded material, I really couldn't imagine that maps and dictionaries were routinely copied illegally. I suppose that making a new word to track illegal copying seems harmless enough,until it turns up in some official document: " Reason for dismisal...repeated acts of esquivalience".
I definitely have a bone to pick with mapmakers though. Maps are used by emergency vehicles and delivery services. It's irresponsible to falsify streets. "Bunnies" in a park or on a building were a better idea. However, global positioning and Google satellite maps may have already made this point moot.
thanks,

[Barry Nordin]

Columnist Mark Patinkin had an article in the June 3 Providence Journal detailing his efforts to locate Moscow, RI. He never did find it, despite his best efforts, and apparently didn't know about "map traps." I sent him an e-mail similar to my previous post bringing him up to date about Rhode Island's underwater Rockland and the non-existent Moscow.