While I'm on the subject of words, my belletrist (Stephen King taught me that word...imagine that) friend James sent me this great contest from the World Wide Words newsletter (you have to scroll down to item #3):
Candida Frith-Macdonald e-mailed me, appropriately from a British domain named "brainstorm", to ask whether there is a good word for the deliberate misspelling of words to evade spam filters.
She continued: "I say this after the fifth copy of a spam promising 'PEN1S ENKARGEMENT' has arrived today. As 'enkargement' is the one I see most often I'd be inclined to use this as a word for the practice, or perhaps 'hyding'. But there are probably better ideas. Or perhaps a word that could cover all such distorted forms, including ones like 'Kwik Save' [A British discount store chain - Ed]. Any chance of a World Wide Words hunt for the perfect name?"
First off, be skeptical of any email from anybody named Candida Frith-MacDonald (turns out she's a book editor), but to the point: anybody got anything? My best suggestion follows:
bun mot
Not bad, eh? Submit entries to competition@worldwidewords.org by June 8.
4:14:55 PM
Words
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