A word that exists solely to be a word that doesn't exist.

Few updates lately, I know. Work, parenthood and a back-straining stint of yardwork have been keeping me pretty busy.

But I felt I needed to make time to post about this:

One of my recent forays into the wilds of Wikipedia recently unearthed a gem of a word.

Esquivalience.

The ho-hum definition is "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities."

But according to Wikipedia, this word "is a fictitious entry in the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD), which was designed and included to protect copyright of the publication."

That's right. A fake word, made up solely to prevent copycat references from swiping all the definitions off the New Oxford's CD-ROM.

And it worked. Dictionary.com reportedly fell for the trap and included the word before being outed.

This reminded me of my family's decades-long argument over whether Trivial Pursuit includes a few fake answers for the same reason. (Mom cited this just about every time she was wrong.)

But lo, it turns out we've had it backward. Trivial Pursuit actually got busted for stealing intentionally incorrect answers from other sources.

I would hope that the Trivial Pursuit researchers behind those gaffes were promptly fired for blatant esquivalience.