# Has anyone encountered problems when the accidentally treated a "copyright trap" as real?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 23, 2013, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071 "2013-01-23T04:26:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/41 "2014-03-31T07:44:52Z")

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> [@Lamia](#):
>
> I work in academia, and I would be pretty surprised if a professor (or TA) devoted that much time and attention to a minor mistake. A high school teacher would probably care even less. Something like “esquivalience” might merit a “?” in the margin, but not a 100+ word comment and a below average grade.

When I was in college taking English 101, I used a perfectly cromulent word in one of my papers. The teacher had this dinky little book, smaller than an ordinary paperback, which I don’t think was even a dictionary, just a list of hard words or something similar. Of course, the word I used was not in that dinky book, so he claimed it wasn’t a word and wanted me to change it. We had a bit of argument about it and he wanted me to redo the paper with the word changed. I redid the paper (other changes), but didn’t change the word, so we had another argument. I could have shown him the word in my much larger dictionary, but didn’t think to bring it with me to his office. Actually, I had a hard time believing he was unfamiliar with the word. The word, by the way, was “tout” used as a verb. I don’t recall if I got marked down for using it or not.

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**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/42 "2014-03-31T16:39:18Z")

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> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> Has a writer ever been fired or a student given a low grade because they saw this neato word they had never heard of before and used it in their writing, not knowing the word was a copyright trap that nobody actually used?

That would be pretty nasty treatment if it happened.

Why would you punish a student who’s so enamored of language that he trolls through dictionaries looking for cool new words for being unlucky in his discovery?

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