plagiary

Indeed ‘plagiary’ becomes a word in English only in 1598, ‘plagiarism’ in 1621, ‘plagiarize’ in 1660, ‘plagiarist’ in 1674.

A few years earlier, the Chief Justice, Matthew Hale, writing anonymously on the Torricellian experiments, had been anxious to insist that he had cited his sources, in order to ‘avoid, as much as I can, the imputation of a Plagiary’.

The case follows that of the family of Marvin Gaye successfully suing Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke for plagiary on their hit Blurred Lines.

The uneasy self-absorption which Sheridan immortalized in the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic is apparent enough in this autobiography, but presents itself there in no offensive form.

It should be added that, though Cumberland’s sentimentality is often wearisome, his morality is generally sound; that if he was without the genius requisite for elevating the national drama, he did his best to keep it pure and sweet; and that if he borrowed much, as he undoubtedly did, it was not the vicious attractions of other dramatists of which he was the plagiary.