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'Betrump' - meaning 'to deceive or cheat' - is Britain's favourite long-lost word.
Experts at the University of York asked the British public to vote for their favourite from a list of 30 words that have fallen out of use.
And a whopping 42 per cent voted for 'betrump'. It's a word that sounds strangely current, though it can be traced back to the 16th century.
Other contenders included:
- Coney-catch - To swindle cheat; to trick, dupe, deceive
- Quacksalver - A person who dishonestly claims knowledge of or skill in medicine, a pedlar of false cures
- Slug-a-bed - One who lies long in bed through laziness
If your mind jumps to a certain President when you hear 'betrump', you aren't the only one.
Trump is not the most fortunate name as it is: in Britain of course, it means fart - and it reportedly has a whole host of dodgy translations across the world.
And the rediscovery of 'betrump' makes a bad situation worse. Here's an example of how you could use it: 'Donald Trump has allegedly betrumped his voters 1,628 times since becoming President'.
Dr Dominic Watt, senior lecturer in language and linguistic science at the University of York, told the Daily Mail:
The word 'betrump' had almost completely fallen out of use for nearly 500 years, until it's very recent re-emergence as the nation' s favourite 'lost word'.
The Lost Words campaign has allowed us bring back an interesting but - until this year - exceptionally obscure word
Dr Watt has now written to the Oxford English Dictionary to petition for the re-inclusion of 'betrump' in the dictionary.
HT Daily Mail
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