A pretext. This term comes from the practice of hunters sometimes dismounting and, hiding behind their horses, stalking game on foot, slowly advancing until they come within shooting distance. The transfer of this practice to a means of concealing a secret plan, or, in politics, to a candidate being used to conceal the candidacy of some other person, took place in the sixteenth century. Shakespeare used it in As You Like It (4.3): “He uses his folly like a stalking-horse and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.” Time had it on November 21, 1977: “She’s willingly making herself a stalking horse for the ultra right.” British lexicographer Nigel Rees reported that in British politics of the early 1990s, the term was applied to a member of Parliament who stands for election as party leader with no hope of winning, in order to test whether the incumbent leader is challengeable.