Lidfaith

lidfaith (n.) — LID-fayth. The unexamined trust placed in a plastic lid pressed on by a stranger in a hurry, carried across a car park, up two flights of stairs and into a meeting without once being tested.

From lid, and faith, in the older sense of a belief held precisely because it has not been investigated. Related to the rarer pocketfaith, the same conviction applied to a zip, and to bagfaith, which concerns a paper handle and a great deal of shopping.

Lidfaith is strongest in the first ten seconds and decays steadily thereafter. It cannot survive being questioned: the moment you wonder whether the lid is on properly, the only cure is to stop walking and look, and the looking is itself an admission that the faith has gone. Those who never look are rewarded roughly ninety-five times in a hundred, which is exactly the ratio that keeps a superstition alive. The remaining five occasions in a hundred are why the phrase I did check it exists, and why nobody saying it has ever been believed. A cup that has emptied itself down a coat sleeve produces, in every recorded case, the same short remark about the lid, delivered to nobody in particular.

Usage: He crossed the whole office on pure lidfaith, sat down, took the lid off to add sugar, and discovered it had never been on at all.