What is "toothing"

Toothing \Tooth"ing\, n.

1. The act or process of indenting or furnishing with teeth.

2. (Masonry) Bricks alternately projecting at the end of a wall, in order that they may be bonded into a continuation of it when the remainder is carried up.

   Toothing plane, a plane of which the iron is formed into a series of small teeth, for the purpose of roughening surfaces, as of veneers.

Tooth \Tooth\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Toothed; p. pr. & vb. n. Toothing.]

1. To furnish with teeth.

   The twin cards toothed with glittering wire.
   --Wordsworth.

2. To indent; to jag; as, to tooth a saw.

3. To lock into each other. See Tooth, n.,

4. 
   --Moxon.

n. 1 The act or process of indenting or furnishing with tooth. 2 (context construction English) brick alternately projecting at the end of a wall, in order to be bonded into a continuation of it when the remainder is carried up.

Toothing was originally a hoax claim that Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones or PDAs were being used to arrange random sexual encounters, perpetrated as a prank on the media who reported it. The hoax was created by Ste Curran, then Editor at Large at the gaming magazine Edge, and ex-journalist Simon Byron. They based it on the two concepts dogging and bluejacking that were popular at the time. The creators started a forum in March 2004 where they wrote fake news articles about toothing with other members and then sent them off to well-known Internet-based news services. The point of the hoax was to "highlight how journalists are happy to believe something is true without necessarily checking the facts". Dozens of news organizations, including BBC News, Wired News, and The Independent thought the toothing story was real and printed it. On April 4, 2005, Curran and Byron admitted that the whole thing was a hoax. There have, however, been real Bluetooth dating devices to hit the market since.