A few weeks before school started, I was hanging around with some friends and suggested we have a picnic while the weather was still decent. Instead of hearing an echo of "yeah" I was met with an unexpected response.

"Picnic is a racist word," one of my friends said. "That's why my family always calls it a cookout." My eyes grew wide with shock. "It comes from back in the day when families would pick a n----- to hang and then they'd sit around and eat and watch (the hanging)."

I was so embarrassed because it made me seem so stupid. I kept wondering why I never heard this before.

I took it upon myself to investigate the word because I wanted to find real documentation. It just sounded so strange to me that in all my life no one ever told me anything of that nature.

I looked in a dictionary and found the word picnic comes from the French "pique-nique". I also checked takeourword.com, which has an extensive collection of word origins. It said picnic is a "word which seems to have originated around the end of the 17th century. Originally, the word denoted a sort of party to which everyone brought along some food; the notion of an 'outdoor meal' did not emerge until the 19th century."

I also discovered it was all part of an e-mail hoax claiming, "picnic is a racist word and can be verified by an official at the Smithsonian Institute." This hoax apparently circulated all over the nation and people were clicking send on their e-mail without making sure the claim was correct. I shared the wealth of information with my friend who admitted that someone had told her it was racist and that's why her family resorted to using the word cookout.

This hoax may seem like it's not a big deal, but there are incidents when people's reputations were ruined by a few sentences in someone's inbox. Tommy Hilfiger is one individual who was hit hard by cyberspace.

Many of you may recall a few years back when there were e-mails claiming Hilfiger was a guest on the Oprah show where he said something to the effect of, "If I knew that minorities would buy my clothes I wouldn't have made them so nice." The letter went on to say that Oprah kicked him off her show and that everyone should boycott him.

I was shopping with my mom when the rumor was going around, and when we passed the Tommy Hilfiger section she raised her voice enough for anyone around to hear and said, "Tommy Hilfiger is such a racist, no one should buy his clothes." It was so believable at the time, but now looking back we probably should have checked the information.

It is interesting to see how fast rumors spread — even more so through the Internet. It's also disturbing that people would rather forward information that sounds dramatic than to verify the truth. Hilfiger may have it easy with public relations professionals conducting "damage control" because it's their job to make sure his reputation isn't on the line. But when it comes to the English language it's up to us to protect it.

Anyone can write up a malicious e-mail, and on that same token we can all refuse to forward them unless we are sure the content is accurate. After all, what's the point in spreading more inaccurate information in the world.

Mariam Sobh is a graduate student in journalism. Her columns appear Thursdays. She can be reached at opinions@dailyillini.com.