\title{Department of euphuistic fewtrils} \author{gleanings from the Chairman} \begin{Article} A mailing list long long ago in another galaxy carried a missive from a linguaphile wondering about the word `coaybtete-leranus' found in Microsoft Word thesaurus. Later letters had many suggestions about the origins of the word. Here are some selections from all the speculations, guesses, musings, and expert opinions\ldots \section{Verify-it-first department} \noindent\emph{Lee Dickey }: Instead of `coaybtete-leranus' I found `coaybtete-leranous' \noindent\emph{Helfrich Raymond }: YES, my Mac Word 5.1 shows this synonym for common!!! Disgruntled ex-employee on the way out? Or, soon-to-be-ex-disgruntled-employee? \noindent\emph{Jeffrey Windsor }: The OED doesn't list it either. I checked the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., and found nothing near to `coayete-leranus.' As a matter of fact, there is nothing between `coax' and `cob.' And if it's not in the OED, it isn't. \section{To-err-is-human-to-really-foul-it-up-takes-a-computer department} \noindent\emph{David J. Swift }: I bet it's an algorithm belch. \noindent\emph{Bob Funchess }: I suspect this is an artifact caused by the way many computerized spelling dictionaries and thesauri store words. \subsection{Ask-the-source department} \noindent\emph{Jason Reed }: I called Microsoft, as I live in Seattle and the call is local, contacted somebody in MS-Word (Mac) (206-635-7200), anyway\ldots they told me that it was a unknown word placed there by mistake. \section{It's-a-plagiarism-protection-device department} \noindent\emph{Andy Eddy, Editorial Manager, New Media Group }: Authors of reference material often put misspellings, fake words or phrases into their work. That way, if there's a question of another reference copying material, words like this would be red flags of where the material came from and very strong evidence in a legal argument. \noindent\emph{Thomas Hudson }: \ldots putting in tiny inconsistencies that shouldn't interfere with normal use (who's going to use `coaybtete-leranus'?) but would be an instant tipoff if somebody steals their thesaurus database. \noindent\emph{Bernard Booth }: When I ran my bookshop we often resorted to various versions of Books In Print --- an extremely useful resource, we discovered, however, that BiP was littered with bogus entries (which were occasionally ordered by customers), the reason for this was to provide proof of plagiarism if someone ever released their own list. All D.J.Dwyer would have to do is to cite the deliberate errors in the text to prove that it was merely a copy of their own work. \noindent\emph{Lee Dickey }: Map makers are known to include things in their maps that are deliberately wrong, just to use in the event that they find a blatant copy, because then they can prove that it came from \noindent\emph{their} map, and not from other source. \section{Other-interesting-tid-bits department} \noindent\emph{Jim Falconer }: I tried re-arranging the letters, in case this was an anagram. I came up with `Your Seattle Beacon', which seems just too damn coincidental not to have been done on purpose (not to mention that it was set up to be a synonym for `stodgy' or `dull'). \noindent\emph{Luke McGuff }: I've heard that if you type `supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' into an otherwise-empty Word document, you get `precocious.' \section{Conclusion} Most of the responses suggested that the word was a deliberate inclusion, designed to thwart unauthorized copying. That seems like the most valid explanation. Thank you all for helping solve the mystery of the Word! \end{Article}