<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">\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}
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