pinchbeck

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 15, 2007 is: pinchbeck • \PINCH-beck\  • noun 1 : an alloy of copper and zinc used especially to imitate gold in jewelry 2 : something counterfeit or spurious Examples: Danny claims that the word "trousers" comes from the name of "inventor" Jacob Trowser, but that etymology is just a pinchbeck. Did you know? On November 27, 1732, an advertisement ran in a British newspaper announcing that "the toys made of the late ingenious Mr. Pinchbeck's curious metal ... are now sold only by his son. . .." The Mr. Pinchbeck in question was Christopher Pinchbeck, a London watchmaker who invented the alloy that would be posthumously named for him. Although the metal is used as a substitute for gold, the word "pinchbeck," which can also be used as an adjective, didn't acquire its "counterfeit" sense until the 1790s, over 50 years after Pinchbeck's death. *Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.