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Apr 14, 2022
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Eponyms

This week’s words
pyrrhonism
morphetic
Rothschild
roorback
Hercules

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

roorback

PRONUNCIATION:
(ROOR-back)

MEANING:
noun: A false story or slander, especially one spread for political purposes.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Baron von Roorback, a fictitious author invented during the 1844 presidential elections in the US to discredit the Democratic candidate James K. Polk. Earliest documented use: 1844.

USAGE:
“‘Tom wants to employ a Roorback,’ declared Sutton.
‘You want to spread a false story?’ St. Clair scratched his head.”
Allan Levine; Evil of the Age; Heartland; 2008.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, -- both grammatically and actually, -- whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it. -James Branch Cabell, novelist, essayist, critic (14 Apr 1879-1958)

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