Mountweasel. That’s only one of the many English words, and non-words, I learned from a truly delightful novel by Eley Williams: The Liar’s Dictionary. I had heard about fictitious entries in maps and encyclopedias that were inserted deliberately by the editors to entrap plagiarizers. For example, a map maker might insert a false street called Fictive Lane. Of course this is well before google maps anyway. Another publisher who included included Fictive Lane would be caught. In The Liar’s Dictionary the Swansby’s Encyclopedia is taking generations of editors and bored scriveners to construct. One of them, the fictitious lisper Winceworth goes a bit overboard with his imaginative neologisms secreted away among the slips to be imported years hence into the dictionary. Many years later, a descendant of the original founder Swansby, is trying to complete the marathon project and discovers some of the fake entries. A young intern, Mallory is assigned to root them out. The novel tells of the cat and mouse game between the long passed on Winceworth and the modern day Mallory. The story is a light hearted quick read that I followed enjoying all obscure words both real and fake until the whole shebang goes up in smoke.
Eley Williams mentions in the acknowledgements the book by Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. I had read Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman years ago and it was a truly compelling tale that has been made into a somewhat dull movie of the same name, available from Hoopla. A book that tells the full story of the OED is a favorite of mine, Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary written by Murray’s descendant (I think his granddaughter) K. M. Elisabeth Murray.
Two Strikes 