A Rose By Any Other Name?

One of the hot new words of 2006, according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, was “pretexting.”

Pretexting, the article pointed out, was the term certain individuals at Hewlett-Packard used to describe “the practice of calling telephone companies to obtain people’s phone records, generally under the pretext of claiming to be those individuals.”

I thought we already had a simple verb to describe that behavior: lying.

Let me check… yes, I think I’m onto something here… Webster’s says:

Main Entry: lie
Function: verb
1: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2: to create a false or misleading impression
transitive verb : to bring about by telling lies (lied his way out of trouble). “Lie” is the blunt term, imputing dishonesty (lied about where he had been).

That’s what I recall being taught.

Here’s an idea for CEOS, executives and managers who want to clean up corrupt corporate cultures in the United States: explain your company’s actions in words every five-year-old understands.

Want to bet that “pretexting” isn’t on the kindergarten vocabulary list?