Plagiarism or Other Mishaps: Word Use and Abuse
Sunday November 21, 2004
In an article for The Guardian, Robert McCrum writes, "Plagiarism as we know it today has a short history. It was the Romantics, for whom the originality of a thought was central to literary authenticity, who established the idea of borrowing as abhorrent." Read more about plagiarism, from The Guardian. Here are a few more resources:Read more about plagiarism, literary forgery, etc.
Comments
Whilst the Latin ‘plagare’ shares the same root as ‘plagarism’ the word itself originated from the name of the Pro Consul of Egypt; Marcus Plagarius (ca. 100 B.C). He claimed to have discovered copying of texts by local scribes who then passed them off as their original work. This was possible due to the poor communications between far flung parts of the Roman Empire.
It was later proved that he was not in fact the discoverer of this phenomenon but had himself copied the concept from a text originating in Mesopotania ca. 150 BC (although scholars disagree as to whether or not this text was the original or was plagarised from an earlier cuniform source).