I notice that the four letter word is being used frequently in this election, not just on social media but also in the mainstream media and at ceramahs. As campaigning for the 14th general election enters the last leg, it’s likely that usage of the four-letter word will increase.

Many ministers have used it in recent weeks, as has Najib Razak.

The prime minister has used the four-letter word against the opposition numerous times, especially in commenting on the utterances of some politicians. For instance, he used it on May 1 in a Tweet.

Pakatan Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad has also used it in recent days.

It may not be an exaggeration to say the word has become the darling of politicians and others.

The four-letter word used to pop up before every now and then, but never with the frequency it is used today. Within a year or two, it has gained immense worldwide currency.

And we have to credit, or blame, whichever way you choose to see it, US President Donald Trump for it. Trump popularised the term “fake news”and in doing so gave “fake” a filip.

So much so the Collins dictionary, in 2017, named “Fake news” its word of the year, saying use of the term had increased by 365% since 2016. According to Collins, “fake news” is a noun meaning “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting”.

We are all aware that the Malaysian government rushed through the Anti-Fake News Act 2018 just before Parliament was dissolved with hardly any consultation or input from the public, including the media. Despite an outcry, including by human rights groups and those in the media who fear it will be abused, the Anti-Fake News Act 2018 was gazetted on April 12.

The first person to be charged under this law was not an opposition member or government critic, as many had expected, but a visitor from Denmark, who said he did not know such a law existed in Malaysia.

Salah Salem Saleh Sulaiman, 46, a Danish citizen of Yemeni descent, was sentenced to a week’s jail and fined RM10,000 for making an allegation that the police were late in responding to the killing of Palestinian university lecturer Dr Fadi M R Albatash, in Setapak last month.

He pleaded guilty to posting a video on YouTube in which he claimed he was with Albatash during the assassination and that the police only arrived 50 minutes later, after he had made 43 calls, and that an ambulance arrived an hour later.

Now, police are to investigate Dr Mahathir under this law. Kuala Lumpur police chief Mazlan Lazim was quoted in the media, on May 2, as saying the probe was over a claim by Dr Mahathir that the jet he had chartered to fly to Langkawi on May 27, the eve of nomination day, had been “sabotaged”.

Dr Mahathir was reported to have said that after he had been told of a fault in the private plane he was to board, he voiced suspicion that it might have been an attempt to prevent him from reaching Langkawi in time to file his nomination papers for the May 9 election. Dr Mahathir is contesting the Langkawi parliamentary seat.

It may not be far-fetched to predict that if the Barisan Nasional wins the election, there will be a long list of people facing charges under this and related laws.

In the heat of the campaign, in their enthusiasm to convince voters to vote for them or against their opponents, candidates and ceramah speakers would have made countless remarks and allegations, opening themselves to prosecution under the anti-fake news law.

In all probability, no one will be prosecuted under this law if the opposition Pakatan Harapan wins power, as it had voted against this law in Parliament. That, of course, remains to be seen as one can never be certain what power can do.

But I am more interested in the four letter “fake”. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “fake”, the adjective, as “Not genuine; imitation or counterfeit” and “fake”, the noun, as “a thing that is not genuine; a forgery or sham.” Oxford defines “faked”, the verb, as “forge or counterfeit (something)”.

Writing in the Oxford University Press’s blog, linguist Anatoly Liberman, a professor in the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch at the University of Minnesota, says no one is certain of the origin of this word.

However, he ventures, the word “fake” was probably borrowed from the language of thieves, passing from low slang to colloquial English before becoming respectable.

In the OED, he notes, the word “fake” – then meaning “ to do, to do for; plunder; kill; tamper with, for the purpose of deception” – appeared only after 1819. “Probably”, Liberman says, “‘fake’, noun, verb, adjective, began to circulate in the London underworld around the middle of the eighteenth century. Thieves became global before the rest of us, and their words are often international. The low German or Dutch origin of ‘fake’ has often been proposed.”

He goes on to talk about the German and Dutch words that could have fathered ‘fake’ such as “fecken” (Middle Dutch) which meant “to catch or to gripe”, and “Fach” (German) which meant “partition, compartment, department”.

Liberman also thinks today’s “fake” could have some relation to German verbs that may have been the forerunner of another more indiscreet but way, way, popular four-letter word, which you, the gentle reader, would never ever think of uttering.

So, a word associated with thieves and the underworld, and probably that other indelicate four-letter word, is today one of the most popular words used by politicians, from Trump to those in Malaysia. That’s rather interesting, don’t you think?

The views expressed by the writer do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.