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Mimi Launder
Nov 22, 2017

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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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 MailÂ
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