Nobody is quite sure where the term “kayfabe” originated. It may be a bastardized form of pig Latin, something to do with the actual word “fake.” It may have its roots in the culture of wandering 19th-century carnivals, the world inhabited by P.T. Barnum and the confidence men and the salesmen who sold actual snake oil. Its modern usage, though, is sufficiently specific that only a relatively small proportion of people would even have a sense of what it means. For decades, wrestlers were expected to keep kayfabe even when they were off the clock.

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