Today’s word of the day, courtesy of Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary) is egregious. Pronounced / ɪˈgri dʒəs / or / ɪˈgri dʒi əs /, with the stress on the second syllable, this adjective means “extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant,” although the dictionary includes “distinguished or eminent” as an archaic definition (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/egregious).

Merriam-Webster defines it as “very noticeable, especially glaringly bad” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/egregious). M-W continues, “Some words originally used for animals that gather in flocks have been herded into use for people, too. The Latin word grex means ‘flock,’ ‘herd,’ or ‘group,’  nd is the root of several English words, including gregarious, which originally meant ‘tending to live in a flock, herd, or community rather than alone’ but has become a synonym for ‘sociable,’ and egregious. The Latin forebear of egregious, egregius, literally meant ‘out of the herd’ but was used figuratively to mean ‘outstanding in one’s field.’ Egregious entered English in the 16th century with that same, now-obsolete meaning, but over time gained a sense meaning ‘conspicuously bad’ or ‘flagrant,’ possibly as a result of ironic use of its original sense” (ibid.).

What we have with egregious is an example of pejoration: “an historical process by which the semantic and connotative status of a word tends to decline” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pejoration).

The word appears in English in the “1530s, ‘distinguished, eminent, excellent,’ from Latin egregious ‘distinguished, excellent, extraordinary,’ from the phrase ex grege ‘rising above the flock,’ from ex ‘out of’ (see ex-) + grege, ablative of grex ‘a herd, flock’ (from PIE root *ger- ‘to gather’).
“Disapproving sense, now predominant, arose late 16c., originally ironic. It is not in the Latin word, which etymologically means simply ‘exceptional’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=egregious).

On this date in 1957, “the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama” presented an incredible story about a Swiss family. The report “presented a family in the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland gathering a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and ‘virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil’. Footage of a traditional ‘Harvest Festival’ was aired along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the perfect length of spaghetti” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax).

“Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it. The editor of Panorama, Michael Peacock, told the BBC in 2014 how he gave de Jaeger a budget of £100 and sent him off. The report was made more believable through its voice-over by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. Peacock said Dimbleby knew they were using his authority to make the joke work, and that Dimbleby loved the idea and went at it eagerly” (ibid.).

The spaghetti tree hoax is probably not the biggest broadcast hoax in history, despite the fact that the BBC received numerous phone calls asking about the story’s authenticity. The biggest broadcast hoax probably was the War of the Worlds hoax perpetrated by The Mercury Theater of the Air and Orson Welles on October 31, 1938. But the spaghetti tree hoax was pretty egregious.

I would also like to mention that this date is the anniversary of my first date with my lovely wife. We were in college at the time, and Davidson had a big weekend every quarter—concerts, parties, etc. That weekend was Spring Frolics, and I invited her to accompany me to the various events. We had met the previous December at a performance of The Nutcracker Suite in Charlotte. The year was 1977, 49 years ago, and I’m not sure, but I think that makes it the longest running April Fools joke in history, though not as dramatic as the spaghetti tree one.

Happy April Fools Day.

Today’s image is “A recreation of a scene from the report, showing a woman harvesting cooked spaghetti from the branches of a tree” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax#/media/File:Sunny_april_morning_spaghetti_tree_harvest_(7036208493).jpg).