I missed the Mountweazel thread on its first go-round, but I know plenty of musicians are convinced a certain music publishing company's inexpensive editions are pirated, because they include obvious errors; the assumption is that the cheap editions were basically photocopied from expensive ones with musical Mountweazels in them.

Thanks for the pointer to Lynch's paper, which sounds like a fun read. Blackadder's "Ink and Incapability", featuring Dr Johnson and his dictionary, now sounds less fictional than it did before I read your post. Your mention of Mountweazels also got me wondering. I have two questions for the professional linguists here: Have any mountweazels escaped their cages and become "real" words? If not, why not? Especially in the case of something as potentially useful as esquivalience.

Not all of those long words are impossible to play in Scrabble---just too long to play in one move. You'd have to build off another word, which of course isn't possible for all the cited words.

Great post, though.

Lynch's paper is great fun, thanks. Rex Stout used the controversy over the Webster's Third as a plot point in one of his Nero Wolfe novels in which Wolfe has ordered a copy of the dictionary for the sole purpose of tearing it sheet by sheet to burn in his fireplace. Sadly, I don't recall which book it is.

"decacuminated" could be constructed off "cumin" in the chance of a stray letter to either side.

You should always be prepared in scrabble and war.

OT: The useful Rasulid Hexaglot glossary (14th century Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongol) can now be had for a mere $143.28.

Link

Presumably the "first" English dictionary is meant? The Chinese character dictionary _Erya_ 爾雅 was produced in the 3rd century BCE and the Chinese character dictionary _Shuowen Jiezi_ 說文解字, in the 2nd century CE. We seem to not pay attention to Asia sometimes--e.g., Diderot's encyclopedia was predated by Korean encyclopedias and moveable type was invented well before Gutenberg, again by the Chinese while the Koreans were the first to cast metal moveable type.

Decacuminated makes twenty-five appearances in Google Books, of which twenty-three are dictionary entries. It makes one appearance in Google Scholar: in Lynch's paper!

Chinese dictionary words sometimes do come back to life, and not only in Occidental Orientalism.

It's Gambit. It wasn't really a plot point, but it's fun; it was the intro and Wolfe being his usual opinionated self. Archie tell the client, "Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of the a fit. It's complicated. There's a fireplace in the front room, but it's never lit because he hates open fires. He says they stultify mental processes. But it's lit now because he's using it. He's seated in front of it, on a chair too small for him, tearing sheets out of a book and burning them. The book is the new edition, the third edition, of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. He considers it subversive because it threatens the integrity of the English language...."

"Do you use contact as a verb?" Wolfe demands of the client, who (luckily) answers "No" so he is allowed to hire Wolfe.

Archie also points out the Wolfe knew he was going to burn it when he bought it, since he didn't order a leather-bound edition. That's planning ahead.

Gambit (1962) is the Nero Wolfe novel with the Webster's Third burning.

I'm sorry to have mantled The Ridger's posting. I blame Webster's Fourth.

Maybe "naulage" began life as a typo for "haulage"?

No, it's based on Latin naulum 'passage money, fare.'

I'd just like to say, a propos of not very much, that one of my favourite film lyric moments is Bing Crosby singing: "Like Webster's dictionary, we're Morocco-bound".

Yes, I've always loved that line.