英语词汇psalmanazar hoax的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

Psalmanazar hoax. George Psalmanazar (1679?–1763) was a pseudonymous literary faker whose real name still isn’t known. Psalmanazar, a Frenchman, fashioned his pseudonym from that of the biblical character Shalmaneser. Claiming to be a native of Formosa (Taiwan) and even inventing a com- plete “Formosan” language that he spoke, he attracted the at- tention of Scottish army chaplain William Innes, who saw through his imposture but became his confederate. Innes “converted” him in order to get credit for a “conversion” and in 1703 Psalmanazar went to London, where credulous authori- ties hired him to teach “Formosan” at Oxford and write a dic- tionary of “Formosan.” The following year the impostor wrote The Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, which described the odd customs of the “Formosans”—that they ate only raw meat, including the flesh of executed criminals, and they annually offered as a sacrifice to the gods 18,000 hearts cut from the breasts of boys under the age of nine. In 1706 Catholic missionaries to Formosa exposed Psalmanazar and after a time he confessed his fraud, renouncing his past life in 1728 and going on to become an accomplished scholar. But there remained something of the impostor in this friend of Dr. Johnson. The title of his autobiography, published posthu- mously in 1764, was Memoirs of———commonly known by the Name George Psalmanazar.

词汇	psalmanazar hoax
词源	Psalmanazar hoax. George Psalmanazar (1679?–1763) was a pseudonymous literary faker whose real name still isn’t known. Psalmanazar, a Frenchman, fashioned his pseudonym from that of the biblical character Shalmaneser. Claiming to be a native of Formosa (Taiwan) and even inventing a com- plete “Formosan” language that he spoke, he attracted the at- tention of Scottish army chaplain William Innes, who saw through his imposture but became his confederate. Innes “converted” him in order to get credit for a “conversion” and in 1703 Psalmanazar went to London, where credulous authori- ties hired him to teach “Formosan” at Oxford and write a dic- tionary of “Formosan.” The following year the impostor wrote The Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, which described the odd customs of the “Formosans”—that they ate only raw meat, including the flesh of executed criminals, and they annually offered as a sacrifice to the gods 18,000 hearts cut from the breasts of boys under the age of nine. In 1706 Catholic missionaries to Formosa exposed Psalmanazar and after a time he confessed his fraud, renouncing his past life in 1728 and going on to become an accomplished scholar. But there remained something of the impostor in this friend of Dr. Johnson. The title of his autobiography, published posthu- mously in 1764, was Memoirs of———commonly known by the Name George Psalmanazar.
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