The Wily Mountweazel

The Wily Mountweazel

In 1975, the New Columbia Encyclopedia included an entry for an American photographer that read as follows:

Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942-1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio. Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964. She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes. The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972). Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.

Any of that seem kind of weird to you? Bangs, Ohio? Combustibles magazine?

It was a fictional entry designed to trip up would-be plagiarists. After all, if another encyclopedia printed a bio for Miss Mountweazel, there could be no doubt of its source. Since then, similar copyright traps are known as “mountweazels.”

In 2001, the New Oxford American Dictionary created its own mountweazel, esquivalience, (amusingly defined as the “willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities”) which has since been republished at Dictionary.com. Oops.

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[photo source]