Test 8
Part 3
For questions 17 – 18, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals next to each gap to form a word that fits in the gap. There is an example at the beginning (0). Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Esto es una muestra. Cada test del libro tiene ocho huecos; aquí te dejamos dos para que pruebes el formato. Los otros seis van ya resueltos dentro del texto.
Example:
0. AUTHORITATIVE
Words That Never Were
Few reference books are regarded as more (0) ____ (AUTHORITY) than a dictionary, yet even the most respected have printed words that nobody had ever used. The best-known case is ‘dord’, which appeared in the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary in 1934, defined as ‘density’ in physics and chemistry. The dictionary’s own staff had created it (17) ____ (WIT): a slip noting that ‘D or d’ could stand for density went astray, and the phrase was mistaken for a single word. The entry survived (18) ____ (CHALLENGE) for several years, until an editor noticed that it had no etymology. The Victorian philologist Walter Skeat had already given such accidents a name: ‘ghost words’.
Other phantoms are planted on purpose. The New Columbia Encyclopedia contained an entry on Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer whose invented life ended, in a mischievous final touch, with her death in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine. The New Oxford American Dictionary included ‘esquivalience’, glossed as the wilful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities, so that any unscrupulous competitor tempted to plagiarise its entries would give itself away.
Ironically, exposure has granted these interlopers a curious kind of immortality: ‘dord’ is a staple of books about lexicography, and ‘mountweazel’ has gained enough currency to serve as a name for any deliberately invented entry.
Other phantoms are planted on purpose. The New Columbia Encyclopedia contained an entry on Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer whose invented life ended, in a mischievous final touch, with her death in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine. The New Oxford American Dictionary included ‘esquivalience’, glossed as the wilful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities, so that any unscrupulous competitor tempted to plagiarise its entries would give itself away.
Ironically, exposure has granted these interlopers a curious kind of immortality: ‘dord’ is a staple of books about lexicography, and ‘mountweazel’ has gained enough currency to serve as a name for any deliberately invented entry.
