Mountweazel

Mountweazel (pronounced mount-wee-zuhl)

Factitious material deliberately included in a publication as a “copyright trap”, allowing identification of plagiarism and potential violations of copyright.

1975: A definition by Henry Alford (b 1962) which appeared in a 1975 edition of The New Yorker, referencing an entry in the fourth edition (1975) of the New Columbia Encyclopedia, involving the fictitious Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, said to have died in an explosion while on assignment for the just as fanciful “Combustibles” magazine.  Mountweazel was not a legitimate family name, the neologism coined by Karen Tweedy-Holmes (b 1942), then an editor for the encyclopedia, the purpose being a fictional biographical entry for the imaginary Lillian Virginia Mountweazel.  For all purposes (other than the doomed heroine), mountweasel is used without an initial capital.  Mountweazel is a noun; the noun plural is mountweazels.

Ms Tweedy-Holmes (there can have been few finer names for a lexicographer) described her tragic heroine as an American fountain designer turned photographer, born in 1942 in Bangs, Ohio and most noted for her commissioned series of images of the mailboxes of rural America, her death said to have come in 1973.  Ms Tweedy-Holmes authoritative (and wholly bogus) biographical entry for the late Ms Mountweazel read: “Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942–1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio.  Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964.  She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes.  The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972).  Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”  The coining was for the purpose of a “copyright trap”, in this context an apparently legitimate dictionary entry structurally and stylistically indistinguishable from thousands of others, the idea being that were another publication to include a “Lillian Virginia Mountweazel” entry with the same “facts”, that obviously would be a plagiarism and potentially a breach of copyright.

Combustibles magazine (special issue, 4 June, 1973).

Ms Mountweazel may never have lived but in death is memorialized in the Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection which includes an “extensive collection of Combustibles Magazine” covers, some editions including her assignments, notably “the whimsical history of fireworks” and “disturbing revelations” about Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) who in 1945 had been employed by the US government, suddenly rather more interested in the missiles the German could help them build rather than his wartime use of slave labor.  There’s also the revelation the Flags Up! project, although promoted as the USPS (US Postal Service) using “captivating imagery” to demonstrate how the new ZIP codes enhanced “the efficiency and modernization of the postal system”, actually was funded by the CCF (Congress for Cultural Freedom), a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) “front organization” used during the Cold War to produce anti-Soviet propaganda.  The “messaging” in Flags Up! was to show the way freedom of thought and the expression of ideas was allowed freely to flow between Americans, however remote they might be.  Of course, also included is the “special issue” of Combustibles (4 June, 1973) in which was announced the death the previous day of Ms Mountweazel, killed in the crash of a Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 SST (supersonic transport) passenger airliner during the 1973 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport.  In the accident, all six crew members died along with eight in the nearby village of Goussainville, Val-d'Oise where Ms Mountweasel had been researching “the negative health effects of sound pollution in communities near major international airports.”  After her death, photojournalism scholar Pierre Menard, acknowledged Ms Mountweazel as “one of the most important in the world of pyromaniac publishing.”  Pierre Menard was also factitious, the name borrowed from Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote), a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

Official Journal of the Institute of Explosives Engineers, March 2026 edition.  It would seem women involved in “blowing-up stuff” prefer to wear sensible shoes which seems wise.

While there was no “Combustibles” magazine (although there would seem to be a need for one), for students of such things or enthusiasts of the art & science of “blowing-up stuff”, the (IEE) Institute of Explosives Engineers (Voice of the Explosive Industries) publishes the quarterly Official Journal of the Institute of Explosives Engineers, currently distributed to a membership of some 2,000 “highly qualified engineers and specialists” involved in blowing-up stuff.  Additionally, copies are made available to selected academics, professional institutions and those in the business (of blowing-up stuff).  As well as academic papers, features and articles, the journal functions as a trade publication with information and reviews of new products and services.  The editors welcome submissions relevant to blowing-up stuff and, if appropriate, prior to publication, will submit texts for professional peer review.  The next International Explosives Conference will be held between 16-18 June, 2026 at the Parkgate Hotel in Cardiff, Wales and the institute recommends the early booking of hotel rooms because on the evening of the 16^th, Take That (an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990) will be performing their Circus Live show at the city’s Principality Stadium.

A synonym of mountweazel is the German Nihilartikel, said to have appeared in 2003 as a hoax in the German-language Wikipedia in 2003 and later picked up by the English version from which it spread through blogs, print publications and such, these serving as “references” appearing to legitimate subsequent use.  The construct of Nihilartikel (being a noun, if used in the original German, with an initial upper case) was the Latin nihil (nothing), from nihilum (from ne- (not) +‎ hīlum (the least bit)) + the German Artikel (article) (from the Middle High German artikel, from the Latin articulus.  This is defined (in the jargon of Wikipedia) as a type of citogenesis (a circular form of citation where various sources report each other, creating a false impression of reliability).  The construct being cit(e) +‎ -o- +‎ -genesis, citogenesis was in 2011 coined by US engineer Randall Munroe (b 1984), presumably on the model of the homophone cytogenesis (the formation, development and variation of cells), the construct being cyto- + genesis.  Cyto- (“cell” as used in biology) was a learned borrowing from the Ancient Greek κύτος (kútos) (container, receptacle) and genesis (origin, start; point (in time) at which something comes into being). came via Latin from the Ancient Greek γένεσις (génesis).  Cite (in this context “to quote; to repeat, to make mention of; to list”) was from the Old French citer, from the Latin citare (to cause to move, excite, summon) and frequentative of ciēre (to rouse, excite, call).  So, just as cytogenesis describes cells being formed and variations emerging from components, in citogenesis what is happening to the assembly of “apparent (but erroneous) facts” with “authenticity verified” on the basis of other “apparent (but erroneous) facts that gained their “apparent veracity” merely from the frequency of citation.

The Pentagon Papers.  In 1971, the USSC (US Supreme Court) ruled 6-3 against granting the Nixon (Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US VPOTUS 1953-1961 & POTUS 1969-1974)) administration an injunction preventing further publication excerpts of the documents by the New York Times & The Washington Post, holding the government’s attempt to invoke “prior restraint” violated the First Amendment (freedom of the press) of the constitution and the claim of a threat to national security was not in this case sufficiently justified to allow suppression of the press.  It’s interesting to speculate how today’s USSC would rule on the same facts.

For other purposes, there are variants of the “copyright trap”.  Organizations wishing to detect the source of “leaks” (documents being photocopied and given to unauthorized recipients) would sometimes make visually almost imperceptible changes (an additional space, a character in a slightly different font etc) in certain copies, meaning an analysis of a “leaked copy” could isolate the source.  That obviously depended on the existence of relatively few original copies but that is the nature of leaked material.  The digitization of documents of course made copying and leaking not only quicker and easier but also made possible grabbing data on a huge scale.  While in 1969 Dr Daniel Ellsberg (1931–2023) had to spend several evenings alone with one of Rand Corporation’s photocopiers to duplicate the 7000-odd pages that became “the Pentagon Papers”, by the time Edward Snowden (b 1983) and Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning (b 1987) were stealing US government data by the gigabyte, all they needed was a USB stick onto which stuff silently was copied as they went about their paid work.  All digital copies of a document are of course functionally identical and even metadata which can reveal something about the copying (such as a date stamp) can be edited so what sometimes was done was the insertion of something hidden which could be detected only at the software level and not visually.  The best known was the “Alt + 255 trick”, a keyboard combination which created the NBSP (non-breaking space) Unicode character U+00A0.  Visually indistinguishable from the standard gap (U+0020) created by a tap of the space bar, the location could be detected using certain text editors so, correctly implemented, it would be a useful device for tracing sources of leaks.  However, “software tricks” can be detected by other software which is why crooked Hillary Clinton’s (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) legal team (a well-resourced and busy crew) insisted on printing out thousands of E-mails because of fears the investigators exploring the (still not adequately explained) “servergate” scandal might detect in the raw files something crooked Hillary had deleted.

The companion (in form though not intent) of the mountweazel is the “ghost word”.  A ghost word is a word that enters a dictionary, reference book or some other reputable source, despite being “wrong”.  The causative events have been varied, including misunderstood abbreviations, typographical errors, printer's mistakes, errors in transcription or translation, scribal copying errors, damaged manuscripts, corruptions in transmission and mishearings of audio recordings.  While advances in technology have made it possible more efficiently to identify ghost words, the increasing use of OCR (optical character recognition) on texts of sometimes dubious legibility may yet create a few and given the propensity of AI (artificial intelligence) bots to “make-up stuff”, there’s likely to be a new generation yet to be discovered.  In linguistics, the professionals distinguish between “ghost words” and “phantom words” and the distinction matters in their rarefied world but to most of us the latter probably would be thought mere “spelling errors”.

Few have made a great as contribution to the study of the English language as Walter William Skeet, the ghost word but one of his minor legacies.

All that matters for purposes of definition is that the word has no actual history of use in the language.  One celebrated example was “dord” which appeared in the 1934 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, defined as “density”.  What had happened was the chemistry section’s editor had written a note saying: “D or d, cont/ density” (meaning “uppercase D or lowercase d is the abbreviation for density”) but a typesetter misread the spaces, blending the characters to create a “new word”.  Until 1939 “dord” sat on its page in Webster’s, apparently without causing trouble but it was noticed during an internal review and a “plate change/imperative/urgent” instruction was sent to the printer; at that point the linguistic exorcism was effected but, because lead-times and product supply-lines were then longer, not until 1947 were Webster’s confident they successfully had “de-dorded” things.  It could of course have been different.  Had chemists ((The origin, start; point (in time) at which something comes into being). or anyone else) decided dord was a “perfectly cromulent word” and use had achieved critical mass, it would have become a “real word”.  Quite when the term “ghost word” first was used in this sense is uncertain but lexicographers agree it was popularized by English mathematician, philologist & Anglican deacon Walter William Skeat (1835–1912), notable for his seminal work in editing Medieval texts.

The neologism “cromulent” appeared in Lisa the Iconoclast (episode 16, season 7 of the US animated TV series The Simpsons (1989-) which aired on Fox on 18 February, 1996.  Cromulent (acceptable; valid; correct) was deliberately not “a real word”, the gag being it was included in the script to be used by one character to assure another that “embiggen” (to make larger) was “a real word”.  So it was a funny line but the irony was embiggen had a (limited) history of use dating from 1884.  In the years since, it has been included in mainstream dictionaries and has found a niche in the mysterious world of string theory, a collection of explanations of the structure of the universe; being under the rubric of quantum gravity, string theory is understood only by a handful of specialists, not all of whom agree with each other.  Probably few would deny embiggen deserves to be in the jargon of string theory but whether the discipline is cromulent science continues to divide opinion.

Warren Harding (1865–1923; POTUS 1921-1923), New Year's Day, 1920.  Harding presided over a scandal-plagued administration and his early death might have been one of those “good career moves”.  Theodore Roosevelt’s (TR, 1858–1919; POTUS 1901-1909) daughter Alice Longworth (1884–1980) “knew everybody” in twentieth century US politics and in summing up Harding concluded: “Harding wasn’t a bad man, he was just a slob.”

There have over the years been many “ghost words” (the authoritative Wiktionary listing 33 instances in English of examples meeting their strict criterion).  It’s not enough that a word is “wrong”; whether fictitious, malicious, erroneous or whatever, to become a “ghost word” it must in some work of reference be presented as “genuine” and in that form endure long enough to take on some sort of life.  Humorists and experimentalists have of course coined or repurposed words which have entered mainstream use but these are not ghost words because their lineage was documented.  There are also “pseudo ghost words” (those treated as such but with a verified history authenticating the alleged error), a celebrated example being Warren Harding’s use during his successful 1920 presidential campaign of “normalcy” instead of “normality”, the section of his speech containing the offending word was almost aggressively alliterative:

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Unrelated: The mountain weasel (Mustela altaica), an inhabitant of high-altitude regions in parts of Asia including Kazakhstan, Tibet, India, Mongolia, north-eastern China and southern Siberia.

In saying "normalcy", he may have misspoken or perhaps Harding liked the word; questioned afterwards he said he found it in a dictionary which probably was true although whether his discovery came before or after the speech wasn't explored.  Although Harding’s choice was much-derided at the time, normalcy had certainly existed since at least 1857, originally as a technical term from geometry meaning the “mathematical condition of being at right angles, state or fact of being normal in geometry” but subsequently it had on several occasions appeared in print as a synonym of normality.  Still, it was hardly in general use though Harding gave it a boost and it’s not since gone extinct, now with little complaint except from the most linguistically fastidious who insist the use in geometry remains the only meaning and all subsequent applications are mistakes.  In these circumstances, a misspeak “does not a ghost word always make”.  At the time, many assumed Mr Harding had “misspoken”.  For someone to “misspeak” was then understood to mean “saying something incorrectly, unclearly or inaccurately (by mistake).  Misspeak thus distinguished unintentional errors, mispronunciations or “slips of the tongue” from deliberate lies.  “Misspeak” had enjoyed a darkly amusing late career change.  Historically, it meant (1) to fail to pronounce, utter, or speak correctly or (2) to speak insultingly, disrespectfully or inappropriately ( a use long obsolete) but in recent decades it has evolved as a “weasel word” (a word used to hedge a statement, making it vague; equivocal; ambiguous; misleading) used by politicians and others tacitly to admit having lied without having to say: “I lied”.  So it’s beyond a euphemism (which has a hint of polite respectability) and something most associated with crooked Hillary Clinton, notorious for her “strained” relationship with truthfulness although to be fair to crooked Hillary (difficult, but it can be done), her husband (Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001)) did not in such matters set a stellar example.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

A malapropism is a literary device and not a ghost word.  Mrs Malaprop was a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s (1751-1816) play The Rivals (1775); she had the habit of substituting inappropriate but like-sounding words that would take on a ludicrous meaning in the sentence in which they appeared (her intended compliment “nice arrangement of epithets” came from her lips as “nice derangement of epitaphs”).  That was very different from a “mere typo”, a breed which tends either to be annoying or amusing but which in certain documents could be consequential (consider “prescribe” vs “proscribe”) but typos can also coin words.  “Hodling” was intended to be in the text string “I am holding”, typed by a cryptocurrency investor who wished to assure others in the chatgroup he was “holding” his Bitcoin position and not selling despite the sudden drop in the price.  Unfortunately, he’d reputedly enjoyed half a bottle of whisky (or whiskey) so finger control on the keyboard was diminished, thus the word-making “I am hodling.”  That proved a linguistic gift because “hodl” (hold) entered the jargon of the cryptocoin jockeys and hodlers (those who do not react to every price downturn by selling) are thought a fearless elite. 

Applied spoonerism: First assembled in 1977, the Cunning Stunts was a London-based, feminist performance collective.  Suffering the internal conflicts perhaps endemic to collectives, the Cunning Stunts dissolved in 1982, having seemingly worked their concept dry.  In the UK, much alternative theatre didn’t survive the 1980s, the administration of Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) dismantling many of the often left-wing local authorities which had provided a substantial proportion of the funding.

Nor is a spoonerism likely to become a ghost phrase.  A spoonerism is a play on words in a phrase in which the initial (typically a consonant) sounds of two or more of the words are transposed.  It was named after Oxford don the Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), who was alleged to have made many such slip-ups (“Our dear old queen” becoming “Our queer old dean”) although among scholars it’s suspected that while doubtless he made a few, there was likely a healthy industry among his students (and perhaps even his fellow dons) is concocting a more to be attributed.  Another variant was the mondegreen.  Mondegreen was coined by US editor & journalist Sylvia Wright (1917-1981) who, in a piece published in 1954 in Harper's Magazine, recalled a childhood memory of mishearing her mother read a line in the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o' Moray (which appeared in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) by the English clergyman bishop and antiquarian Thomas Percy (1729-1811)): “They have slain the Earl o' Moray, / And laid him on the green”, the second line misheard as, “And Lady Mondegreen”.  Now an acknowledged descriptor, “mondegreen” didn’t appear in mainstream dictionaries until the twenty-first century and that was a product of lists of “obscure or unusual” words beginning to proliferate on the internet as bandwidth increased and cost fell.  Not all novelties pleased the editors but mondegreen was nerdy enough to make the lexicographical cut.  Structurally, there’s no reason why a misspeak, malaproprism, spoonerism or mondegreen can’t become a ghost word; it’s all in the history.

Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo in his battered 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet.

Both embiggen and cromulent are not ghost words because they were positioned as “joke words” rather than being errors and nor are they mountweazels because they were inserted into the script as something other than copyright traps.  Essentially, a mountweazel deliberately is fake while a ghost word is in some sense “wrong”, the distinction summed up as: (1) a ghost word is an error mistaken for truth while (2) a mountweazel is a fabrication presented as truth for strategic reasons.  There are however limitations to the mountweazel’s utility as a copyright trap, the classic example the legal squabble which came to be dubbed “the Columbo Trap”.  Columbo was a TV detective drama which at various times between 1968-2003 was shown on the NBC & ABC networks; it started Peter Falk (1927–2011) as Lieutenant Columbo, remembered for (1) always solving the murder(s), (2) his catch phrase “just one more thing” and (3) driving a dilapidated 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet (one of 504 built than year out of the 2,030 made during a five-year run (1956-1961)).

The Trivia Encyclopedia (1974): Mostly accurate.

The first edition of the best-selling book The Trivia Encyclopedia appeared in 1974; written by Fred L. Worth, it was for years a fixture on bookshop “Christmas gift” lists.  In 1984, claiming damages of US$300 million, Mr Worth filed suit against the distributors of the board game Trivial Pursuit, claiming they had stolen their game’s questions from his books.  There were many instances of copying he cited but his key piece of evidence was a mountweazel in his book: the “trivial fact” the first name of the TV detective Lieutenant Colombo was “Philip”.  This was a product of Mr Worth’s imagination but in the board game, it was included as an answer to that question.  His legal point was that while the board game’s creators could have obtained his other examples from many other sources (as indeed he had), the notion of “Philip Columbo” appeared first in his book and that it was “not a fact” was irrelevant because the basis of his suit was the unauthorized and unattributed copying.

On just about any topic, there's probably a trivia list somewhere on-line.

The distributers of Trivial Pursuit made no attempt to deny sourcing much material from Mr Worth's book, arguing “facts” are not able to receive the protection of copyright.  To emphasize the point, the company provided a long list of published texts from which information had been copied and argued it would be absurd to suggest they could be sued for providing the answer “Queen Victoria reigned between 1837-1901” because that fact appears in thousands of books.  They acknowledged an action might be possible (depending on many things) had they merely published a “book of trivial facts” (a la Mr Worth’s) but a multi-player board game in which questions had to be answered was “a substantially different product” within the meaning of copyright law.  The judge agreed, a finding upheld on appeal and the USSC declined to re-hear the case, thus reinforcing general principle “a fact cannot be copyrighted”.  Mr Worth’s response was that by definition “Philip Columbo” was thus a piece of fiction deserving copyright; the courts did not concur.  Amusingly however, others also copied Mr Worth’s mountweazel and references to “Lieutenant Philip Columbo” over the years appeared in print and on-line, Peugeot in the 1980s even running advertising campaign in which “Lt. Philip Columbo” was mentioned as the “most famous driver” of a Peugeot convertible.  That was a bit of a shift from the company’s original views on the 403 Cabriolet’s appearance in the TV series, the executives not best pleased at its dilapidated state.  Internet sleuths later published close-up screen shots of his police badge which revealed his name was “Frank Columbo”.

Burl & Burr

Burl (pronounced burl)

(1) A small knot or lump in wool, thread, or cloth.

(2) A dome-shaped growth on the trunk of a tree; a wart-like structure which can be 1 m (39 inches) or more across and .5 m (19 inches) or more in height; typically harvested and sliced to make the intricately patterned veneers used in furniture or car interiors.

(3) To remove burls from (cloth) in finishing (which technically means the same as to de-burl).

(4) In Scottish, Australian and NZ slang (1) an attempt; to try (especially in the phrases “give it a burl” & (2) “going for a burl” (going for a drive in a car) (both largely archaic and the latter restricted to the antipodes).

1400–1450: From the late Middle English burle (a small knot or flaw in cloth), from the Old French bouril & bourril (flocks or ends of threads which disfigure cloth), from the Old French bourre & burle (tuft of wool) and akin to the Medieval Latin burla (bunch, sheaf), from the Vulgar Latin burrula (small flock of wool), from the Medieval Latin burra (flock of wool, fluff, coarse hair; shaggy cloth).  The source of the Latin forms is unknown.  The slang forms are probably from the Scottish birl (a twist or turn) but use in this sense seems now to be restricted to Scotland (or those with a Scottish accent) and the South Island of New Zealand.  The large, rounded outgrowth on the trunk or branch of a tree can be highly prized if on a species (most famously walnut) where the timber of a burl develops the swirling, intricate patterns which are used as thinly sliced veneers in the production of furniture and other fine products, notably as trim in the interiors of cars.  Burls develop from one or more twig buds, the cells of which continue to multiply but never differentiate so the twig can elongate into a limb.  In American English, burl has since 1868 been used to describe "a knot or excrescence on a walnut or other tree" but burr is now often used interchangeably while "burlwood", once common, seems now restricted to industry use and commerce.  Burls rarely cause harm to trees but careless (often unlawful) harvesting can cause damage.  The adjective burly (a man large, well-built and muscular) is unrelated and of uncertain origin; the related noun is used of this quality and not the character of timber.  The noun, verb & adjective burlesque is also unrelated.  Burl is a noun & verb, burler is a noun and burled & burling are verbs; the noun plural is burls.  

European burr (or burl) walnut with extensive “bud eyes”.

Burl was productive in English although some forms have a tangled history.  The adjective burly is derived from the circa 1300 borlich (excellent, noble; handsome, beautiful), probably from the Old English borlice (noble, stately (literally "bowerly", ie fit to frequent a lady's apartment)).  The sense evolved by circa 1400 to mean "stout, sturdy" and later "heavily built".  Some etymologists also suggest a connection between the Old English and the Old High German burlih (lofty, exalted) which was related to burjan (to raise, lift).  In Middle English, it was applied also to objects (even transitory things like cloud formations) but has long been restricted to people.   The noun burlesque (piece composed in burlesque style, derisive imitation, grotesque parody) had been in use since the 1660s, the earlier adjective (odd, grotesque), from the 1650s, from the sixteenth century French burlesque, from the Italian burlesco (ludicrous), from burla (joke, fun, mockery), presumably from the Medieval Latin burra (trifle, nonsense (literally "flock of wool" and thing something light and trivial)).  The more precise adjectival meaning "tending to excite laughter by ludicrous contrast between the subject and the manner of treating it" is attested in English by 1700.  Comedy and burlesque represent the two great traditions of representational ridicule, the former draws characters in conventional form, the latter by using a construct quite unlike themselves.  As long ago a 1711, one critic described burlesque as existing in two forms, the first represents mean persons in accoutrements of heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people.  By the late nineteenth century, it typically meant "travesties on the classics and satires on accepted ideas" and vulgar comic opera while the modern sense of something risqué ("a variety show featuring striptease) is an invention of American English which co-evolved during the same era and became predominant by the 1920s.

Burrs (or burls) on a tree.  Burls should not be confused with galls which are small and form along twigs and leaves.  Burls are much larger and form on trunks and branches as an integral part of the tree.  Galls grow outside and are independent of the tree.

The noun burlap (coarse, heavy material made of hemp, jute, etc., used for bagging) dates from the 1690s, the first element probably from the Middle English borel (coarse cloth), from the burel or the Dutch boeren (coarse), although there may have been some confusion with boer (peasant).  The second element, -lap, meant "piece of cloth".  There has been debate about the noun hurly-burly (originally hurlyburly) (commotion, tumult) which in the 1530s was apparently an alteration of the phrase hurling and burling, a reduplication of the fourteenth century hurling (commotion, tumult), from the verbal noun of hurl.  William Shakespeare (1564–1616) had hurly (tumult, uproar) and the early fifteenth century hurling time was the name applied by chroniclers to the period of tumult and commotion around Wat Tyler's (circa 1341–1381; a leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England) rebellion.   In the early nineteenth century a hurly-house was said to be a "large house in a state of advanced disrepair" and there is presumably some connection with the dialectal Swedish hurra (whirl round) but it’s all quite murky and whether burly in this context is related to burl in the sense of something rough or merely coincidental a rhyme is uncertain.

Burr (pronounced bur)

(1) A rough or irregular protuberance on any object, as on a tree (spelled also as burl).

(2) A small, handheld, power-driven milling cutter, used by machinists and die makers for deepening, widening, or undercutting small recesses (technically called burr grinders which, with a revolving disk or cone with abrasive surfaces are used to smooth burr holes).

(3) In metal fabrication, a protruding, ragged edge raised on the surface of metal during drilling, shearing, punching, or engraving (spelled also as buhr); a blank punched out of a piece of sheet metal.

(4) A washer placed at the head of a rivet.

(5) In ceramics, a fragment of brick fused or warped in firing.

(6) In any form of engineering, to form a rough point or edge on.

(7) In structural phonetics, (1) a pronunciation of the r-sound as a uvular fricative trill, as in certain Northern English dialects (of which the Northumberland is an exemplar) or the retroflex r of the West of England, (2) a pronunciation of the r-sound as an alveolar flap or trill, as in Scottish English or (3) any pronunciation popularly considered rough or non-urban.

(8) To speak with a burr (to speak roughly, indistinctly, or inarticulately) (can be applied neutrally or as a (usually class-loaded) disparagement.  The use to describe the classic Scottish pronunciation is merely descriptive and thus usually neutral although it can be modified such as "...spoke in a strong and almost incomprehensible Scottish burr". 

(9) A whirring sound or rough, humming sound.

(10) In the sense of a broad ring on a spear or tilting lance (placed below the grip to prevent the hand from slipping), a variant of burrow (in obsolete sense: borough) (dating from the sixteenth century and now rare except in historic reference).

(11) In geology, a mass of hard siliceous rock surrounded by softer rock.

(12) A sharp, pointy object, such as a sliver or splinter (regionally specific).

(13) As bur; a seed pod with sharp features that stick in fur or clothing (similar to hayseed).

(13) In anatomy, the ear lobe (archaic).

(14) In zoology, the knot at the bottom of an antler (analogous with the burrs (or burls) on trees.

1375–1425: From the late Middle English burre (possibly related to the Old English byrst (bristle)), burrewez (plural) & buruhe (circle), a variant of brough (round tower), an evolutionary fork of which became the Modern English broch.  It was cognate with the Danish burre & borre (burdock, burr) and the Swedish borre (sea-urchin).  The spelling burr was a variant of the original bur, the addition probably a tribute by the written to the spoken long R sound, the use in phonetics noted from the 1750s, presumably both imitative and associative, the sound being thought of as rough like a bur; the onomatopoeic form may be compared with the French bruire.  The original idea of "rough sound of the letter -R" (especially that common in Northumberland) was later extended to "northern accented speech" in general and was soon integrated into the English class system as one of many class identifiers.  It may be the sound of the word is imitative of the speech peculiarity itself, or it was adapted from one of the senses of bur (the late fourteenth century phrase “to have a bur in (one's) throat” was a figure of speech suggesting the choking sensation or huskiness associated with having something rough caught in the windpipe) but the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that despite the similarity, the Scottish -r- is a lingual trill, not a true burr.  Burr is a noun & verb, burred & burring are verbs and burrish, burrless & burrlike are adjectives; the noun plural is burrs.

1962 Facel Vega Facel II.

Powered by Chrysler V8s, the Facel Vegas (1954-1964) were France's finest cars of the post-war years and followed the template of the trans-Atlantic hybrids (a powerful (and cheap) US V8, atop a bespoke platform clothed with stylish European coachwork) which flourished until the first oil crisis in 1973 but were in many ways a "cut above most", featuring aluminum panels and stainless steel rather than chrome trim.  The equipment levels were lavish with leather and interior appointments of the highest quality but one curiosity was the extensive "burl walnut" was actually painted metal, so well executed by Facel's craftsmen it demanded a inspection to reveal the nature of the material.  Facel production ended in 1964, the company bankrupted by the flood of warranty claims which flowed from the chronic unreliability of the French-built four-cylinder engine adopted for a smaller range.  The Facellia (1960-1964) was a good idea because the market for such a thing existed but by the time Facel had re-engineered it to used reliable power-plants (a Volvo four and Austin-Healey six), the debts had become unserviceable and the company was doomed.

1969 Lincoln Continental Mark III (plastic wood).

By the mid 1960s Detroit mostly had abandoned the use of timber.  The internal frames went first, only a handful of low-volume specialist vehicles still using the technique when production resumed in the post-war years.  Next to go were the partial-timber bodies, the best known of which were the "woodie" ("woody" once preferred the preferred used in the UK but "woodie" seems now global, presumably because most such surviving wagons were US-built) station wagons although there were also high-priced convertibles and sedans, the latter pair appealing on the basis of the look but those prepared to pay a premium proved a vanishing breed and that was understandable because the manufacturers recommended an annual re-varnishing, a tiresome task and a financial imposition even in an age when unit labor costs were low.  None were left by 1951 and the station wagons followed within a few years as improved production techniques made "all metal construction" a cheaper path to follow.  However, inexplicable though it may have been to the rest of the planet, Americans liked the "woodie" look on pick-ups (some car-based) and especially station wagons so for decades the manufacturers happily supplied the market with "faux woodies" which were created by gluing on 3M's Di-NOC appliqué, framed by fibreglass spars, all components designed to look like timber.  Sometimes with (limited) success and sometimes not, there were even convertibles, an attempt to cash in on any lingering nostalgia for what was around in the days of the administration of Harry S Truman (1884–1972; POTUS 1945-1953).

1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III (real wood).

In the 1960s, as the "real stuff" became rare, "plastic wood" did proliferate in interiors and increasingly it was "faux" rather than "fake" in that often it was obviously phoney although in the higher-priced lines more effort often was taken to try to fool people.  One strange example was Ford's Lincoln Continental Mark III, produced over three seasons with the design imperative having been: "Put a Rolls-Royce grill on a Thunderbird."  Astonishingly profitable because in terms of engineering it was exactly that and not a great deal more, its success inspired Ford to upgrade a few aspects and one change was to replace the plastic wood in the interior with genuine walnut, once part of a tree.  For whatever reason, Ford opted not to emulate Jaguar or Rolls-Royce and use a burl walnut veneer, opting instead for a straight-grain timber which looked almost exactly like the previous year's plastic fittings.  A very close inspection would reveal the truth but it's doubtful many bothered and Ford must have reached the same conclusion, wondering why they bothered.  When the Lincoln Continental Mark IV was released in 1972, it kept the leather but reverted to a plastic wood that blatantly was phoney; over four seasons, it was a great success and is regarded still as the classis "land yacht".

Lindsay Lohan (top left) with luggage, on-location for the filming of Liz & Dick (2012); the car is a Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) four-door Pullman.  The early versions of the 600 had the most timber trim.

Buyers of the 600 could choose from a variety of timbers when ordering a 600 although the tale of one customer from the Middle East arriving at the factory with his preferred tree is believed apocryphal.  Not all opted for the burl walnut (Zebrano and the dramatic Macasar Ebony among the choices) and one true eccentric sent his 600 to a French coachbuilder to have all the factory’s timber covered in leather but, because the many other modifications included a vast, single-piece transparent Triplex panel spanning the entire length and width of the roof, the absence of walnut may not immediately be noticed.  Unfortunately, after 1967, the veneer no longer appeared on the instrument binnacle, replaced by a leather covering.  Officially, the explanation was the use had proved vulnerable to sun-damage on the W111 (1961-1971) and W112 (1962-1967) cabriolets which used a similar fitting but production costs were high because, with so many curves and crevasses, applying veneer to the binnacles was labour intensive so although the cabriolets were a small part of the model mix, the decision was taken to standardize a leather covering.  Especially on the W111 coupés & cabriolets the veneered binnacles are much admired and some have been retro-fitted to later models.

The circa 1300 bur (prickly seed vessel of some plants) from the Middle English burre was from a Scandinavian source, either the Danish borre, the Swedish hard-borre or the Old Norse burst (bristle), from the primitive Indo-European bhars.  In the 1610s, it was transferred to refer to a "rough edge on metal" which led ultimately to the use in phonetics and the name give to various tools and appliances.  The noun burstone dates from the late thirteenth century and was an adaptation from the Middle English burre, the stone so-named presumably because of its roughness.  Aaron Burr (1756–1836; VPOTUS 1800–1804) fled after killing a political rival in a duel and plotted to create an independent empire in the western US.  In 1807 he was acquitted on a charge of treason.  To remove a burr (typically in engineering or carpentry) is to deburr (or debur).  The homophones are Bur & brr.  The noun rhotacism dates from 1830 in the sense of “an extensive or particular use of 'r'”, from the Modern Latin rhotacismus, from the Ancient Greek rhotakizein, from rho (the letter -r-), from the Hebrew or Phoenician roth.  A technical adaptation from 1844 was the use to describe the conversion of another sound, usually "s" to "r" (as in Aeolian Greek, which at the end of words changed -s to –r, the related forms being rhotacize & rhotacization.  Regarding timber veneers, the conventional wisdom is that burl is American English while burr is used in the rest of the English-speaking world.  That’s not accurate although burl in this sense is an American innovation from 1868 and probably a useful one.  In the specialized arboreal branch of botany, the words cancer and canker were also once used to describe the growths on trees but these uses seem never to have extended beyond the profession.

1965 Jaguar Mark X (1961-1966, renamed as 420G 1966-1970) with the rare manual gearbox.  The Mark X never realized Jaguar's sales expectations in the US market but it could have been a great success if one potential development path had been followed.

Not all the Mark Xs & 420Gs had the burl walnut finish (many with a bland, honey-colored timber) but they are the most desired.  Like the E-Type (XKE, 1961-1974), the Mark X is a classic example of "1960s Jaguar syndrome": Another few months of development and an additional £40 spent on the production line and most of the problems wouldn't exist.  With the burl timber, the Mark X's interior was one of the most atmospheric of the era but although impressive in appearance, the dashboard's timber top rail obviously was a safety issue (it was a time when the wearing or even fitting of seatbelts wasn't obligatory and airbags were generations away) and when the 420G appeared in October 1966, a full-width (with central clock) padded section had replaced the upper wood; visual appeal sacrificed for safety.

1959 Bentley S1 Continental Two-Door Saloon (Design 7500) by H.J. Mulliner.

Before the marque’s late century revival of differentiation, the Continentals (1952-1965) were regarded by some dedicated aficionados as “the last ‘real’ Bentleys” although there was once a purist faction which held none had been built since Rolls-Royce assumed ownership in 1931 and undertook an elaborated form of “badge-engineering” which, by the mid-1960s, evolved to the point where a Bentley was listed at a few pounds less than the equivalent Rolls-Royce because “it took less time to manufacture the grill”, there being no other difference between the two.  In their day, the Continentals were among the most expensive cars available and being coach-built, although there were “standard body designs” there were many variations and detail differences so it may be no two exactly were alike.  The R-Type Continental (1952–1955) was the one which established the car’s reputation and there’s a high survival rate among the 208 units produced.  The S-Series Continentals (S1, S2, S3, 1955 to 1965) were more numerous with over 1,100 built and while the lines weren’t exactly avant-garde, compared with the contemporary Rolls-Royce models which showed obvious pre-war roots, they were quite rakish.  The interiors too were notable for the burl walnut trim that could be astonishingly ornate, even the instrument bezels sometimes delicately finished with a matching veneer.

Lindsay Lohan behind the wheel of 1972 AMC Javelin SST, photo-shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine's Work Issue, October 2022: dress and boots by Alexandre Vauthier (b 1971), earrings by Carolina Neves (b 1986), ring by Sauer, photographed by Ellen Von Unwerth (b 1954).

By 1972, the US manufacturers largely no longer attempted to make the fake wood look “realistic” and the obviously plastic appliqué became almost a motif in itself.  Like many manufacturers, AMC liked three letter designations and they also had a trim package called “SST” which, according to internal documents, stood for “Super Sports Touring” and not “Stainless Steel Trim” as has been suggested (although use was made of the metal for some of the bright-work so the assumption was not unreasonable).  Doubtlessly AMC expected some positive association in the public mind with the SST (supersonic transport) projects several US aerospace manufacturers were in the era pondering as competition for the Anglo-French Concord(e).  In another specialized field, those in carpentry concerned with fine veneers, there are further distinctions, some defining a burr as an English word meaning a type of growth on a side of a tree which is full of “bud eyes” (the most distinctive pattern associated with expensive veneers) while burl is of US origin and refers to any type of growth on the side of a tree, including burrs.   That would seem to suggest burl would thus include the healing growth over surface damage or broken branches.  Others, notably timber merchants seem most often to regard burls as any highly figured wood with twisted and contorted grain regardless of whether it comes from a growth on the side of a tree, root, stump, or has grown all the way up the trunk, and whether it contains bud eyes or not.  In commerce, this is doubtlessly useful because people buy timber for veneering on the basis of appearance rather than where it happened to grow.  It would of course be useful if one word could be accepted to mean the growth on a tree and the other the harvested timbers from these growths but, being English, such a logical distinction didn't evolve.