The BBC needed to restore trust in itself, said the British government (in which public trust is immaculate), after an inquiry found that Diana, Princess of Wales had been persuaded to appear on Panorama by lies and forged documents. The princess, claimed a minister, had been “inveigled” into her interview.
That term is a corruption of the French aveugle, meaning “blind”: so if you inveigle someone you restrict their sight, perhaps by pulling the wool over their eyes. Alas, long it has been so with royals: the verb is first attested in Robert Fabyan’s 1516 chronicle, where the future Richard III, at the time the Duke of Gloucester, inuegelyd the archbishop of Canterbury into coming with him to see the Queen and persuade her to let him “protect” her sons. (The princes later died in the Tower of London.)
If one is not metaphorically blinded by inveigling, one might still be ensnared: sometimes literally, as in the web of a certain tropical spider, according to the great naturalist and plunderer Sir Hans Sloane in 1725. Only time will tell if Diana’s infamous interviewer, Martin Bashir, is to join them.
• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus.
