Today’s word of the day, thanks to The Dictionary Project, is plagiarism. Plagiarism is a noun that refers to “the act of using another person’s work (words, ideas, passages, etc.) and claiming it as your own or without proper attribution” or “an instance of using another’s work (words, ideas, passages, etc.) and claiming it as your own or not providing proper attribution” (The Dictionary Project | PO BOX 1845, Charleston, SC 29402). The email I got has a wonderful quotation: “Imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery – it’s plagiarism. Red Skelton, 1913 – 1997.” The difference in the two definitions is that one describes the act and the other describes a specific instance.

The word first appears in English in the “1620s, from -ism + plagiary (n.) ‘plagiarist, literary thief’ (c. 1600), from Latin plagiarius ‘kidnapper, seducer, plunderer, one who kidnaps the child or slave of another,’ used by Martial in the sense of ‘literary thief.’
“This is from plagiare ‘to kidnap,’ plagium ‘kidnapping,’ which are from plaga ‘snare, hunting net’ (also ‘open expanse, territory’), which is perhaps [Watkins] from PIE *plag– (on notion of ‘something extended’), variant form of root *plak- (1) ‘to be flat’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=plagiarism)

That’s kind of a crazy notion, that plagiarism comes from a Latin root that means “kidnapper,” but I really like the idea. In a lecture in 1914 entitled “On Style,” Arthur Quiller-Couch, an English writer, gave this oft-repeated bit of advice: “If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings” (https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/kill-your-darlings-writing-advice-what-writer-really-said-to-murder-your-babies.html). So the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 40 AD-c. 100 AD), known to us as Martial, was very protective of his words and ideas. He wrote epigrams—a “witty, ingenious, or pointed saying tersely expressed” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/epigram) –and was, apparently, concerned about his words and ideas being stolen by others. So he likened someone stealing his words to stealing a child. And then Quiller-Couch took it one step further, though for quite different reasons.

Martial was actually involved in an early case of plagiarism. Given that reading and books were limited to the elites in Roman society, poets were known to read their work aloud. And in doing so, they would sometimes read the word of other poets, giving credit where credit was due. But Martial learned that a fellow poet, Fidentinus, was reciting Martial’s poetry without attribution, so he wrote, “Fame has it that you, Fidentinus, recite my books to the crowd as if none other than your own.
If you’re willing that they be called mine, I’ll send you the poems for free.
If you want them to be called yours, buy this one, so that they won’t be mine.

This was really Martial’s only recourse as there were no copyright laws. There were also no copyright laws in England in the early 17^th century, and Ben Jonson, the first professional writer in England and the first to publish his own plays, was concerned with both his finances and his legacy. He wrote an epigram, perhaps in imitation of Martial, called “To Prowl the Plagiary” (1601):

Forbear to tempt me, Prowl, I will not show
A line unto thee, till the world it know;
Or that I have by, two good sufficient men,
To be the wealthy witness of my pen:
For all thou hear’st, thou swear’st thyself didst do.
Thy wit lives by it, Prowl, and belly too.
Which, if thou leave not soon (though I am loath)
I must a libel make, and cozen both.  (https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/prowl-plagiary)

Whether there was a specific target in mind or not, it is hard to say.

There have been some notable cases of plagiarism in recent years as well, despite copyright laws and despite college English professors emphasizing the need for proper citation. Arthur Haley, the author of the 1976 novel Roots, which was turned into a very popular miniseries in 1977. Haley was sued by Harold Courtlander, and he settled the suit out of court for $850,000. Two famous American historians, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, both admitted to plagiarizing from other authors in their works. Goodwin, who won a Pulitzer Prize, stepped down from her position as a Pulitzer judge when her plagiarism was revealed.

Another famous plagiarist is currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. In 1965, when a first-year student at Syracuse University’s law school, Biden plagiarized five pages from a law review article. He said, “I was wrong, but I was not malevolent in any way” (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/2588844/seventeen-times-biden-lied-plagiarized-and-exaggerated/). The faculty decided that he would receive an F for the class and have to repeat it, but they also allowed that the F would be expunged when Biden passed the course, which he did the next year with an 80/100. Biden, by the way, finished law school 76^th in a class of 85 (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/trump-campaign-press-release-copy-that-joe-bidens-long-record-plagiarism).

Biden ran for the Democratic nomination for president when he was a senator from Delaware in the 1988 campaign. He was eventually forced to drop out of that campaign due to another plagiarism scandal. In his closing remarks at a 1987 debate, Biden talked about how he was the first member of his family to go to college, how his family members worked in the coal mines of Eastern Pennsylvania, But he finally admitted in 2004 that he never had family members who worked in the coal mines. In fact, he had stolen much of that speech from British Labour politician Neal Kinnock. Furthermore, he even copied Kinnock’s physical and vocal style for that part of the speech (ibid.). He was called out for it pretty quickly, leading to his dropping out of the race, though it did not prevent him from eventually becoming president.

But it wasn’t just the British from whom Biden stole. Early in 1987, Biden lifted lines, without attribution, from a 1968 speech by Robert Kennedy. He claimed that he did not know that he was stealing from Kennedy, that the speech had been written for him. That is similar to the excuse given by Doris Kearns Goodwin, that she was having graduate students help her with her research. But it does not excuse the plagiarism. In the same speech, Biden also took phrases from John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey (ibid.)

And you would think that Biden had learned his lesson by being forced out of the 1988 campaign, but he didn’t. In his 2020 campaign, he plagiarized policy ideas directly from various groups who got no recognition from Biden.
“In the case of his education policy, Biden used a sentence word for word from an education policy publication from the group XQ Institute. ‘Students who participate in high-quality career and technical education are more likely to graduate, earn industry credentials, enroll in college, and have higher rates of employment and higher earnings,’ the sentence read.” (Matt Viser, Dino Gradoni, And Jeff Stein, “Joe Biden’s Campaign Acknowledges Lifting Language From Other Groups For Its Policy Plans,” The Washington Post, 6/4/19).
“The use of other groups’ words in Biden’s environmental plan became known after Josh Nelson of the progressive group CREDO noticed Tuesday that much of its language about carbon capture sequestration appeared to resemble talking points from pro-industry groups. Nelson found the phrases were a near-identical match with wording used by the Carbon Capture Coalition, whose members include Shell, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. Biden’s climate plan calls for making carbon capture, use and storage a ‘widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals.’ On its website, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions’s Carbon Capture Coalition says ‘its goal is to make carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) a widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals.'” (Matt Viser, Dino Gradoni, And Jeff Stein, “Joe Biden’s Campaign Acknowledges Lifting Language From Other Groups For Its Policy Plans,” The Washington Post, 6/4/19). (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/trump-campaign-press-release-copy-that-joe-bidens-long-record-plagiarism).

I suppose I find this offensive because I am a Professor Emeritus of English, and I tried so hard to teach about the evils of plagiarism. I used to tell my students, “There are very, very few things that you can get for free in this life, but researchers and professors are willing to give you the results of their work for free. They ask only one thing, that you give them credit for their words and ideas.” I mean, yeah, there are some things in the world that are worse than plagiarizing, but I actually doubt that Joe Biden could have become president of the USA had he kidnapped someone’s child or slave.

Today’s image is a portrait of Edward Frances Blewett (1859-1926). Blewett was an engineer and a politician. He served two terms in the House from 1907-1911, representing Northeastern Pennsylvania, including Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Blewett was a graduate of Lafayette College. He is also Joe Biden’s great-grandfather (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Francis_Blewitt).