The reality is that fake additions are a thing, and they go by the name of ‘mountweazels’. Were you to consult the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia, you would find an entry for one Lillian Virginia Mountweazel: a photographer, born in Bangs, Ohio, best known for her pictures of rural American mailboxes. Tragically, the entry relates, Virginia was killed at the age of 31 by an explosion whilst on an assignment for Combustibles magazine.

The whole story is of course fake. Happily, Virginia Mountweazel neither exploded on or off the scene, and her biography is nothing more than a plagiarism trap. If the doomed photographer ever surfaced in a rival encyclopedia, the editors would know at once that their work had been lifted.

Dictionary-writers have occasionally managed to pull off the same stunt.

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They say that the saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies. It’s a thought that Keir Starmer might be dwelling upon this week, particularly when the literal meaning of ‘betrayal’ is a ‘handing over’.

In 1765, the lexicographer Samuel Johnson included in his Dictionary of the English Language the word ‘backfriend’, which he defined as ‘a friend backwards; an enemy in secret’. Its successor is today’s ‘frienemy’, the second part of which is rooted in the Latin inimicus, literally an ‘unfriend’.

Some words are equally two-faced. For the Romans, a hostis was a stranger, one who might be a guest at a hostel. But as strangers have long been mistrusted, so hostis generated ‘hostile’, in case that guest turned out to be the enemy. Which means that hostility was the turning of guests upon the host, a metaphor that seems particularly apt for current politics.

Any host facing backfriends might want to pay special attention to their drink. If Downing Street guests take their drinks from a a silver salver, they might appreciate the fact that ‘salver’ originally meant ‘fore-tasting’ – the testing by servants of any refreshment served to the ruler for traces of deadly poison. Of course, the host might equally take such a prospect with a pinch of salt, an expression with unexpectedly deadly beginnings. Its story is based on the story of a startling discovery made by the Roman general Pompey who, after conquering the enemy country of Pontos and searching the royal palace of Mithridates VI, discovered that the King, convinced of imminent attack by his opponents, successfully made himself immune to poison by frequently swallowing small doses of it. These he took with a pinch of salt, cum grano salis, to help them go down.

Clearly the PM would prefer a love-potion to poison, one that ensured obedience and equanimity like that served in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play in which the rambunctious character Bottom is nicknamed ‘Bully’ by the rest of his comedy crew. ‘Bully’ also straddles the friend and enemy divide, for it was once a term of endearment that comes from the Dutch for ‘lover’. Evidently bullies were so aware of how much they were adored that they became swaggering braggadocios and hectors, ensuring ‘bully’s modern sense.

Of course between the friends and the foes there will always be the sycophants in the middle. According to the literal meaning of ‘sycophant’ itself (literally, a ‘fig-shower’), these were those who silently offered those in authority the contemptuous hand gesture of a ‘fig’, a thumb wedged between two fingers, whilst flattering them to their faces. In the 17th century they would have been known as the ‘catchfarts’: servants who followed the boss - and the political wind - a bit too closely for comfort.

So much for the enemies in secret: what about those who are ever-faithful and true? The word ‘friend’ is a relative of ‘free’, for it first described someone within a group or family who was not a servant, and therefore not beholden to any boss. Etymologically speaking, it is just one letter away from ‘fiend’, a word created to be the exact opposite of ‘friend’ and part of the eternal axis of ‘love’ and ‘hate’.

The key, or course, is to differentiate between those who have your back, and those who want to stab you in it. Prime Ministers tend to find that out the hard way. The loyal mingle with the snakes, until friendship and treachery become indistinguishable. The by-election in Makerfield will certainly be a gift for someone, but whoever it is might want to know that, in ancient times (and still today in German), the meaning of ‘gift’ was poison. Which means several pinches of salt may be required in the upcoming days.