Fictitious entries, also known as fake entries, Mountweazels, and Nihilartikels, are deliberately incorrect entries or articles in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and directories. Entries in reference works normally originate from a reliable external source, but no such source exists for a fictitious entry.
The neologism Mountweazel was coined by the The New Yorker magazine based on a fictitious entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia.[1] Another term, Nihilartikel, is of uncertain origin, combining the Latin word nihil, "nothing" with German Artikel, "article".[2] There is also the specific term trap street.
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It is not always simple to recognize these. It is especially difficult when the same fictitious entry is reprinted and adapted by multiple reference works. In such cases, the multiple sources serve to bolster the entry's authenticity, so that many come to believe that they are reading a factual article.
Uncovering fictitious entries is a part of the game for editors and publishers. In some cases, the game can extend beyond a single work, as an academic parody or a satire is reproduced, quoted, or otherwise extended into multiple publications such as encyclopedias or science periodicals.
One can only speculate about fictitious entries that go undiscovered, especially once a work becomes very old. Katharina Hein writes, "Insiders assume that every encyclopedia contains wrong keywords."
There is great stylistic variance in fictitious entries: some are simple parodies that are easily seen through, but others are carefully constructed pastiches that imitate factual entries so well that they are very difficult to detect. Fictitious entries normally follow the same structure as a standard entry: biographies have a structure that is particularly identifiable, and therefore false biography articles are the most common type of fictitious entries.
Besides the obvious possibility of simple playful mischief, fictitious entries may be composed for other purposes. Chief among these is to catch copyright infringers. By including a trivial piece of false information in a larger work, it is far easier to demonstrate that someone has plagiarized that work: they will presumably copy the fictitious entry along with other articles.
This is very similar to the inclusion of one or more trap streets on a map or invented phone numbers in a telephone directory. Neither of these is effective for copyright purposes in the United States; see Feist v. Rural, Fred Worth lawsuit or Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co., 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992.[3] However, these traps may still be useful. Even if the trap cannot be used in a court, it still helps a business owner to detect copying.
An outright forgery intended to mislead the reader on a matter of substance would not generally be classed as a mere fictitious entry.
Most listings of the members of the German parliament (including its own website) feature the fictitious politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid, allegedly a member of the parliament since 1979. Among other activities he is reported to have contributed to a major stone-louse symposium in Frankfurt (see below).
The German-language Der neue Pauly. Enzyklopaedie der Antike, edited by H. Cancik and H. Schneider, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1996, ISBN 3-476-01470-3) includes a fictitious entry now well-known amongst classicists: a deadpan description of an entirely fictional Roman sport, apopudobalia, which resembles modern football (soccer).
Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1887-89) contains about 200 fictitious entries.
Zzxjoanw was the last entry in Rupert Hughes’ Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia of 1903, and subsequent editions down to the 1950s, which was claimed to be a Maori word for a drum. It was later proved to be a hoax (not least because there is no Z, X or J in the Maori language).
The 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia contains a fictitious entry on Lillian Virginia Mountweazel (1942-1973).[1] Her biography claims she was a fountain designer and photographer, best known for her collection of photos of rural American mailboxes, Flags Up!. She was born in Bangs, Ohio, and died in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine. Mountweazel was the subject of an exhibit in Dublin in March 2009 examining her fictitious life and works.[4]
The first printing of the 1980 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians contains two fictitious entries. The first is on Guglielmo Baldini, a non-existent Italian composer, and the second was on the subject of Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup, who purportedly composed a small amount of music for flute. Esrum-Hellerup's surname derives from a Danish village and a suburb in Copenhagen. The two entries were removed from later editions, as well as from later printings of the 1980 edition.
The New Oxford American Dictionary, in August 2005, gained media coverage[5] when it was leaked that the second edition contained at least one fictional entry. This was later determined to be the word esquivalience, defined as "the wilful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities," which had originally been added in the first, 2001, edition. It was intended as a copyright trap, as the text of the book was distributed electronically and thus very easy to copy.
Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary contains an entry for the obviously fictitious bird Jungftak.
The German-language medical encyclopedia Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch features an entry on the Steinlaus (Stone Louse, Petrophaga lorioti), a rock-eating animal.[6] The scientific name implies the origin: a creation of the German humorist Loriot. The Pschyrembel entry was removed in 1996 but, after reader protests, was entered again the next year, with an extended section on the stone louse's involvement in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Swedish music encyclopedia Sohlmans musiklexikon contains an obviously facetious entry about Metaf Üsic (a pun on the Swedish spelling and pronunciation of metaphysics, "metafysik"), an alleged Turkish synth artist and musical scholar, whose research interest were the beards of famous musicians and the importance of facial hair in making music.[7]
Joel Whitburn's pop chart research books say that Ralph Marterie's version of "The Song Of Love" peaked at #84 for the week ending December 26, 1955. However, Billboard Magazine did not put out an issue that week, and Marterie never recorded this tune. A similar situation occurs in his compilation of Billboard's Rock charts, where Whitburn includes the fictitious song "Drag You Down" by the equally non-existent group The Cysterz. Similarly, a June 1979 issue of Billboard included, on its Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart, a record entitled "Ready 'N Steady" by an artist known as "D.A." It is the only single ever to appear in Billboard that neither Whitburn, nor any other known collector, has been able to obtain. In a 1995 interview, Whitburn believed it to be an extremely rare record, [8], but more recently, he has announced that the more likely situation is that neither the song nor the artist ever did exist. [9]
Discover magazine frequently runs one fake article in their April edition as an April Fool's joke. The articles are often so outrageous that they are hard to miss, yet the next month's issue frequently has angry letters from readers who feel misled or quote bad science. Examples have included the discovery of the "Bigon"[10] (a subatomic particle the size of a bowling ball) and of the "Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer" (an Antarctic predator resembling a Naked Mole Rat that burrows through ice).
San Serriffe was originally the topic of an April Fool's article in The Guardian.
The American Science and Surplus catalog of educational and scientific supplies lists a "Find the fake catalog item" contest in the April edition of their catalog.
Scientific American usually has a hoax article each April, such as the disproof of the four color theorem, and discovery of a computer made of ropes and pulleys by the ancient "Apraphulians". In an April 2005 editorial titled "Okay, We Give Up", the magazine apologized for favoring evolution over creationism.[11]
The Economist occasionally runs April Fool's articles. Examples include articles on genetically engineered pet dragons, the adoption of a 10-hour day and the harmonization of EU birth rates.[12]
The book The Golden Turkey Awards describes many bizarre and obscure films. The authors of the work state that one film described by the book is a complete hoax, and challenge readers to spot the made-up film; the imaginary film was Dog of Norway, which supposedly starred "Muki the Wonder Dog", which in reality was the authors' own dog. (Also mentioned in the book is the "gay Jesus film" HIM, also long thought to be a hoax, but apparently actually was made and shown to audiences.)[13]
The Trivia Encyclopedia placed deliberately false answers for a limited number of quiz questions, for copy-trap purposes; this was tested when the makers of Trivial Pursuit based some of their questions on the work.[14]
The Urban Legends Reference Pages (snopes.com) include a section titled The Repository of Lost Legends, containing false discussions of made-up legends (for example, that the bear in the design of the Flag of California is the result of a handwritten note being misread and that it was meant to be a pear). The aim of the stories in the section is to caution readers against using appeals to authority, and encourage the checking of references for claims that seem unreasonable; the initials of "The Repository of Lost Legends" spells out TROLL. Ironically, within another of the Urban Legends Reference Pages, there are two records of entities who have fallen for the trap,[15] one being the TV show Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed,[16] and another on a trivia board game called Urban Myth.[17]
Australian archaeologist Tim Flannery's book Astonishing Animals, written in collaboration with painter Peter Schouten, describes some of the more outlandish animals alive on Earth. They caution that one of the animals is a product of their imagination and it is up to the reader to distinguish which one it is.
Rhinogradentia are an entirely fictitious mammalian order, extensively documented in a series of articles and books by the equally fictitious German naturalist Harald Stümpke. Both the animals and the scientist were allegedly creations of Gerolf Steiner, a zoology professor at the University of Heidelberg.
In 1978, the fictional Ohio towns of Goblu and Beatosu were inserted into that year's official State of Michigan map as a nod to the University of Michigan's traditional rivals from Ohio State University.[18] The doctored maps were withdrawn and now fetch up to $150 in mint condition.
Mount Richard is the name of a fictitious peak in the USA that appeared on county maps in the early 1970s. It was believed to be the work of Richard Ciacci, draftsman. It was located on the continental divide. The fiction was not discovered until two years later.[19]
The town of Agloe, New York was invented by map makers but eventually became a real place.
Each issue of the product catalogue for Swedish consumer electronics/hobby articles retailer Teknikmagasinet contains a fictitious product. Finding that product is a contest, "Blufftävlingen", where the best suggestion for another fictitious product from someone who spotted the product gets included in the next issue.[20]
Muse (a magazine for children 10-14, published in the USA) includes as a regular feature a two-page spread containing science and technology news. One of the news stories is false and the reader is encouraged to guess which one.
In the United Kingdom in 2001, the Ordnance Survey (OS) and the AA reached an out-of-court settlement of £20m after deliberate "errors" on OS maps were reproduced on maps by the AA.[21] A portion of this sum was to cover missed and future royalty payments.[22]
Author Isaac Asimov wrote The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline as practice for his thesis in 1948. At first glance it appears to be a genuine, highly complex, scientific essay; however on closer analysis one finds it is science fiction presented as a clever parody of opaque scientific writing: it describes a substance that is so soluble, it dissolves before coming in contact with the solvent.
A Fred Saberhagen Berserker science fiction short story, "The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron," has a Berserker directed to a star system by an encyclopedia salesman. The salesman is put on trial for treason, but reveals that the encyclopedia article for the star system, with population figures, resources, etc., was a fictitious entry included in the encyclopedia to detect plagiarism; thus the Berserker actually ended up in an empty star system where it ran out of fuel and ceased to be a threat to humanity.
The literature about fakes, parody, travesty and pastiche barely touches upon the phenomenon of the fictitious entries. This may be because reference books are not in the view of the people writing on these topics. Among the few exceptions are two German language articles:
   | Report From Iron Mountain - This page has moved |
| | Spoof - Home Page in Oxford Music Online |
| | Kelemenopy - World Wide Words: Kelemenopy |
| | U.S. Legal Protection for Databases - U.S. Legal Protection for Databases |
| | April fools: Economist.com - April fools: The cruellest month | The Economist |
| | Okay, We Give Up: Scientific American - Okay, We Give Up: Scientific American |
| | Urban Legends Reference Pages: Humor (Media Goofs) - snopes.com: Humor (Media Goofs) |
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