Piltdown man
- noun
:
hombre de Piltdown
- Many historians consider the Piltdown man case a cautionary tale about scientific credibility.
Examples
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Funding will only last a few years until AGW is disproved (in your view); then their names will become a source of derision like Charles Dawson (Piltdown man).
Blog text (30) -
The discovery of Piltdown man was initially celebrated as a significant find in the field of anthropology.
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Piltdown Man:
Blog text (8) -
Scientists later revealed that Piltdown man was a hoax, constructed from human and animal bones.
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a proper-name label for a specific fossil and historical hoax; knowing 'Piltdown' (a place) and 'man' (a human) would at best suggest 'a man from Piltdown' but would not yield the specialized palaeontological meaning or the fact it was a scientific hoax. The referential, culture- and history-specific nature of the term makes the meaning unpredictable to a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Piltdown man comes from a fossil found in England in 1912 that people first thought was a 'missing link' between apes and humans. Later tests showed the bones were a 'hoax' made by joining human and animal parts, so the name now reminds people of a famous fraud in science.
