Sentence:  I'm sure MS would have been ecstatic if the Win3.1 crowd had adopted NT, and I'll agree that they never did anything to quash the notion <WSD>pandied</WSD> about by a variety of magazines that NT was going to inherit the Windows desktop, but I don't recall seeing any MS claims of that nature, including the ads they were running that mentioned NT before NT was released. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To distribute or publicize, especially in order to curry favor.