Tuesday, October 25, 2005

esquivalience

n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities . . . late 19th cent.: perhaps from French esquiver, “dodge, slink away.”
... a word which serves as the OED's own little copy protection scheme.

2 comments:

jhaddock said...

I'd like to imagine that several of our high school vocab words originated in this same fashion...

Ryoga said...

Most? Try *all*. How was it they never noticed that like, 8 people in the class were reading a book that didn't exist?