Disgraced and convicted former Enron CEO Ken Lay has made headlines once again. The real news is that now he is being discussed in the past tense:

The sudden death of disgraced Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay topped newspaper headlines across the nation on Thursday, with media reactions ranging from outraged to cheated. Lay, 64, died of a coronary artery disease early on Wednesday while vacationing near Aspen, Colorado with his wife, Linda. His death came six weeks after he and former protege Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of fraud and conspiracy for lying to hide the financial chaos at the energy company that collapsed in 2001 in one of the country's most infamous business scandals.

As I read the above passage, I recalled that the while words lay and lie have meaning different meanings, some of them are related. Lay is the past tense of lie, a word which means both "to be or place oneself at rest in a flat, horizontal, or recumbent position" and "to be buried in a specified place." Another definition of "lie", of course, is "A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood"

Skilling has an interesting set of definitions as well. According to The Random House Unabridged Dictionary, it means:

1. a former silver coin of Denmark, Sweden, and the Danish West Indies. 2. any of various former copper coins of Sweden and Norway.

And from the 1913 Webster's Dictionary we learn that "skilling" is related to the English "shilling":

[OE. shilling, schilling, AS. scilling; akin to D. schelling, OS. & OHG. scilling, G. schilling, Sw. & Dan. skilling, Icel. skillingr, Goth. skilliggs, and perh. to OHG. scellan to sound, G. schallen.]

Now that is rich: as a noun the word "shill" means more or less the same thing as lie. A shill is "a decoy who acts as an enthusiastic customer in order to stimulate the participation of others."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000: (n) One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle. (trans verb) 1. To act as a shill for (a deceitful enterprise). 2. To lure (a person) into a swindle.

The Compact English Oxford Dictionary: noun N. Amer. informal an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice others.

Basically, these two guys names mean lying and getting buried, swindling and money. The Bard once asked "What's in a name?" and it seems that in this instance, the answer is "quite a bit."

Update: Charlottesvillain over at TigerHawk also had pause to wonder what's in a name lately- but for a college linebacker not CEOs.

Tags: ken lay | Kenneth Lay | Enron | scandal | Corruption | Jeff Skilling |

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