

Not a Word: The story of Lillian Virginia Mountweazel - davesailer
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829ta_talk_alford

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mechanical_fish
Of course, once you invent a word... it's a word. In this, words are unlike
Ms. Mountweazel, who does not spring into existence in the timestream just
because an article is published about her.

Or... does she?

This calls for an obligatory Jorge Luis Borges reference:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlön,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius>

Though I can never cite that story without confessing that I prefer the four-
paragraph condensed version by John M. Ford [warning: literary prerequisites
suggested; tolerance for awful puns absolutely required]:

<http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004636.html>

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Jun8
This, of course, is a form of digital watermarking in for textual data. Due to
unique problems, natural language watermarking and steganography is not
advanced or is covered as much as image, video, and audio watermarking. For
one thing, it is impossible to make changes to text that are udetectable by
consumers, as in images; _all_ changes introduce meaning shifts.

If you want to dig deeper, here's one of the rare introductory papers on the
subject:
[https://www.cerias.purdue.edu/tools_and_resources/bibtex_arc...](https://www.cerias.purdue.edu/tools_and_resources/bibtex_archive/archive/PSI000441.pdf).

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Alex3917
"Garret Thomson, a self-described 'code monkey,' or programmer, for
Pseudodictionary.com, a site that calls itself 'the dictionary for words that
wouldn’t make it into the dictionaries,' picked 'electrofish,' calling it
'clunky-sounding.'"

Were they not allowed to use Google?

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spokey
I used to work for a company that produces a well known encyclopedia as well
dictionaries and thesauri and other reference works and I can tell you this
practice makes for a lot of fun. These sort of textual watermarks make it easy
to track who's copying whom across relevant sites.

You can play the same game with false information, whether inserted
accidentally or by design.

The interesting bit is that made up dictionary terms can actually become
perfectly cromulent if enough people fall for the gag.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I feel embiggened with new knowledge. Thanks for the interesting story.

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StrawberryFrog
When this happens on a map, it's called a "trap street"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street>

~~~
gojomo
Or 'map bunnies':

[http://articles.sfgate.com/2001-08-12/news/17611631_1_bunnie...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2001-08-12/news/17611631_1_bunnies-
mapmakers-cartographer)

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hga
In search of Mountweazels, which are something "like tagging and releasing
giant turtles."

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zeynel1
it seems that this was published originally in 2005 -
[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=esquivalience%E2%80%94n.+the+willful+avoidance+of+one%E2%80%99s+official+responsibilities)

