by Hobbsicle » Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:39 pm
Would the four entries be found close to each other in a dictionary/encyclopedia? No Not close to each other, but in similar positions, such as first/last entry for four different letters? No
Copyright traps relevant at all? YES
***************SPOILER********************
They are all definitions given for fictitious entries found in dictionaries or encyclopedias as copyright traps.
Apopudobalia - a Greco-Roman sport similar to soccer. False entry for a non-existent sport in a 1986 German encyclopedia, Der neue Pauly.
Zzxjoanw - a type of Maori drum. Found as the final entry in Rupert Hughes' encyclopedia of music, The Musical Guide.
Lillian Virginia Mountweazel - fountain designer and rural mailbox photographer who died in a freak explosion while on assignment from Combustibles magazine. A non-existent person in the New Columbia Encyclopedia.
Jungftak - I'll just quote the entry: "A Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side, and the female only one wing, on the left side; instead of the missing wings, the male had a hook of bone, and the female an eyelet of bone, and it was by uniting hook and eye that they were enable[d] to fly, -each, when alone, had to remain on the ground." This was in the 1943 Webster's Dictionary.
Finally, the title of the puzzle is a reference to the entry in the New Oxford American Dictionary, esquivalience, "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities".
Thanks for playing, good job to Doriana for the solve.