A day after Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted that there is a new word in the English Dictionary called “Modilie,” the official Twitter handle of Oxford Dictionaries said no such word exists.

“We can confirm that the image showing the entry ‘Modilie’ is fake and does not exist in any of our Oxford Dictionaries,” tweeted @OxfordWords on Thursday in reply to a tweet that Gandhi had sent out on Wednesday. In his tweet, Gandhi sent out a photo, which looked like the page of a word entry on the Oxford Living Dictionaries website, but had the word Oxford removed from it. In the photo, the entry “Modilie” was described as a “mass noun”, which can be used to describe someone who lies. “He is such a Modiliar,” “He just keeps Modilying,” “Look look, there goes a Modiliar” were the examples cited of the word.

Gandhi had also sent out another tweet on Thursday. “‘Modilie’ is a new word that’s become popular worldwide. Now there’s even a website that catalogues the best Modilies! (sic)” linking to a website, modilies.in. People in the Congress said that the site was a creation of the Congress social media team, with several of its members tweeting about it in the last few weeks. Gandhi’s tweet was to publicise the site.

It remains unconfirmed whether Gandhi sent out the tweet himself or someone from the social media team did so on his behalf.

The BJP used the tweet of Oxford Dictionaries to take a dig at is rival.

“Slapped,” tweeted BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya. Gandhi has been accusing Modi of speaking “lies” on various issues, including on the Rafale jet deal.

(With inputs from PTI)

First Published: May 16, 2019 22:35 IST