🚀 go-pugleaf

> I noticed this as well, and assumed that it was one of those things that
> publishers put into books to help spot copyright infingements (originally
> they were imaginary words in dictionaries?). I'm sure that such things have
> a name, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.

They're called "check entries" or variants on that.  Almost anyone doing
data compilations -- dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference guides,
surveys -- includes them routinely.  Their real value is not in spotting
copyright infringements, but in proving them in court.  When the ripoff
artist protests that he got his information the same way you did, i.e. by
painstaking research with many sources, you ask him how his painstaking
research managed to exactly duplicate a fictitious entry.

I doubt very much that it's worth bothering with such things for an ordinary
book, whose contents are distinctive enough by themselves.  Knuth is just
having fun.
-- 
Legalize			Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
freedom!			{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry