May 21, 2002
I turklebaum.  You turklebaum.  He/she/it turklebaums.
I noticed while Web-browsing semi-aimlessly this morning that the cyberlexicographers at NetLingo.com recently added the word "turklebaum" to their online dictionary.

It is defined as "bogus content, fake virus warnings, urban legends, stock hoaxes, and other forms of misinformation and faulty quotations found in email messages, the newsgroups, or on the Web."  And it's wholly appropriate that such phenomena be named after a dead guy who never existed in the first place.

Anticipating the addition of "turklebaum" to the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, I offer this obscure but not unimportant etymological footnote: Credit for the coinage belongs to New York Times writer Pamela LiCalzi C'Connell, who began her Online Diary column for September 6, 2001 with the sentence, "Every so often my email box gets Turklebaumed."