From a post I wrote on Saturday, but didn’t get around to posting until now:
I’m on the ferry coming back from Victoria. I’m sitting in one of those little study carrels, listening to music off my laptop and reading Wired. Hence, multiple items from the magazine.
I just read about ‘mountweazel’ in the Jargon Watch section. It refers to:
noun. Fake words or names invented by a reference-book publisher to detect plagiarism of its electronic databases. the term honors Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, who was fabricated for the New Columbia Encyclopedia 30 years ago.
I was reminded of other words based on proper names. Spoonerism, for one. Douchebag, for another.