• pretexting •
Printable Version Pronunciation: pree-tek-sting • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Obtaining secret or private information by pretending to be someone eligible to see that information; in other words, giving a fictitious identity (pretext) to obtain restrictive information.
Notes: Today's shady word came by 'verbing' the noun pretext "a fictitious reason dreamed up to conceal the real reason for something". The word has recently been rediscovered by those reporting the Hewlett-Packard scandal. September 5th, 2006 Newsweek revealed that the board chair of HP, Patricia Dunn, had hired a team of security experts to spy on HP board members to determine the source of HP company secrets published on the Web. The security experts pretexted themselves as board members and journalists in order to obtain telephone records of HP board members, a practice that is illegal. Ms. Dunn has since resigned as board chair.
In Play: It is odd that the practice of pretexting was wide-spread throughout the 20th century but that the verb describing the practice surfaced only recently: "the detective, Jim Rockford of the 1970s TV series, The Rockford Files, obtained most of his information by pretexting." In fact, most detectives, like con men, obtain information in precisely this way. But the use of the noun pretext as a verb goes back to the end of the 18th century, when Horace Walpole wrote in Memoirs of the reign of king George the third (1797), "A decency was observed, and conscience always pretexted."
Word History: Today's newly discovered word comes from Latin praetextum, the neuter past participle of praetexere "to disguise", a verb made up of prae- "before, in front of" + texere "to weave". (Yep, there it is again in textile.) Remember, now, that X represents two linguistic sounds, [k+s], so this root may be broken at tek-. This is how it was possible for it to emerge in Greek at techne [tek-ne] "art, craft, skill", borrowed in such English words as technique and technology. In German, the same root became Dachs "badger", an animal apparently named for its skill at burrowing. We know this word from the name of the dog that once hunted badgers without pretexting, the dachshund
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