Zzxjoanw
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zzxjoanw is a famous fictitious entry which fooled logologists for many years.
According to Dmitri Borgmann's 1965 book Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities, printed before it was revealed as a hoax:
- "The Music Lovers' Encyclopedia, compiled by Rupert Hughes, revised by Deems Taylor and Russell Kerr, and published in 1954, presents us with one of the most unbelievable, one of the most intriguing letter combinations ever to claim recognition as a word: ZZXJOANW. This spectacular word is so versatile that it possesses not merely one, but three different, meanings: (a) drum; (b) fife; (c) conclusion. The term is of Maori origin"
Ross Eckler describes the hoax in his 1996 book Making the Alphabet Dance:
- "The two-Z barrier was breached many years ago in a specialized dictionary, Rupert Hughes's The Musical Guide (later, Music-Lovers Encyclopedia), published in various editions between 1905 and 1956. Its final entry, ZZXJOANW (shaw) Maori 1.Drum 2.Fife 3.Conclusion, remained unchallenged for more than seventy years until Philip Cohen pointed out various oddities: the strange pronunciation, the off diversity of meanings (including "conclusion") and the non-Maori appearance of the word. (In English transliteration, Maori uses the fourteen letters AEGHIKMNOPRTUW, and all words end in a vowel). A hoax clearly entered somewhere; no doubt Hughes expected it to be obvious, but he did not take into account the credulity of logologists, sensitized by dictionary-sanctioned outlandish words such as mlechchha and qaraqalpaq."

