Friday Word: Roorback

[med_cat]

Roorback

Definition:
a defamatory falsehood published for political effect

Degree of Usefulness:
About 500 roorbacks were posted to Facebook in the time it took you to read this sentence. Useful.

Some Trivia:
A number of words in English come from someone's name, and in most cases the name they come from is a real one. However, occasionally a fake name will sneak into an etymology, as is the case with roorback. The word comes from the fictitious Baron von Roorback, an invented person who served as the source of a particularly unpleasant rumor about presidential candidate James K. Polk in 1844 (that he had branded dozens of slaves with his initials). It is worth noting that our 11th president did in fact own dozens of slaves.

Source, and lots more interesting words can be found here:

Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 2

And if you wish for more: Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 3

Comments

[prettygoodword]

Fun one, but I can't recall ever seeing this in the wild. Has anyone here heard it?

[med_cat]

I haven't ;)

Did you see--one of the the two lists included "spanghew"? ;))

[prettygoodword]

Whee! Nope, missed that. Thanks.

[med_cat]

yup, take a look ;)