Thing Not To Do Today: pharming.

The word pharming has been invented twice, each time as a bleak joke.

Pharming is based on farming, of course, though the reasons for the switch from an f to a ph at the beginning of the two sorts of pharming are entirely different from each other.

The first sort of pharming describes the raising of animals for use in the development of cosmetics or medicines.

The second sort of pharming involves directing someone from a legitimate computer site to a fraudulent one.

Both meanings are rather grim, aren't they, but I suppose they do give us some faint and sadly necessary sense of the infinitely varied cunning and wickedness of mankind.

Thing Not To Do Today: pharming. The word to do with raising animals comes from a mixture of farming and pharmaceuticals. It first appeared in the 1900s. The word to do with computer fraud was coined in the 2000s (computer slang quite often replaces and f with ph, as in phishing and phreaking).