4 days ago
The mysteries of ‘spoof'
'Spook or spoof?' asked my husband, throwing a copy of the paper over to me, and only missing by a foot. When I'd picked it up, I read the headline: 'Fully Chinese-made drone spooking Ukraine air defence.' Then I read the introduction of the report: 'A new Russian decoy drone used to spoof Ukrainian air-defences is made up entirely of Chinese parts.'
Well, to spook a person or an animal is to frighten them. It has been in use in America since between the wars and comes from the Dutch for a ghost. Spoof is a more mysterious word.
Since the 1970s, to spoof has acquired the meaning 'To render (a radar system, etc) useless by providing it with false information'. Originally the noun spoof in the 1880s meant 'A game of a hoaxing and nonsensical character', or so the OED says. But I think it got things wrong from the first.
In 1914 it published its entry for spoof, noting: 'Invented by A. Roberts (b. 1852), comedian.' Arthur Roberts was famous then and nine years later published his autobiography Fifty Years of Spoof. I've just read it and in a way it won't do at all, being full of unconvincing, unhilarious anecdotes. It has, however, a flavour of the late 19th century: champagne, the Prince of Wales, Dan Leno, night houses in the Haymarket, Phil May drinking.
But by 1923, Roberts was not claiming to have invented spoof. He says that he was at a racecourse and saw men 'engaged in what seemed to be an entirely new form of confidence trick'. Asking the name of the game, he was told: 'Oh, it's only spoof, Arthur.' He does not explain the game.
Our own Michael Heath has depicted the venerable Soho game of spoof, where two players simultaneously reveal how many coins are in their hand after declaring the total number while their fists are still clenched. It may be different from Roberts's racecourse spoof, but if not it predates Roberts's adoption of the term.
