Perpetuated by dictionaries for nearly a century, it's surely the most persistent scientific howler in the history of the English language. Siphons – those ingenious plastic tubes we use to fill or ...

Maybe it's because of the uncommonly high regard in which the Oxford English Dictionary is held, but it took 99 years for a user to spot an erroneous definition of a very common word.

A physicist sparked controversy over how a humble siphon worked when he noticed an incorrect definition in the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary. In 2010, the eagle-eyed researcher spotted the ...