My eighth-grade teacher was a plump woman who would have been greatly pleased if someone had mistakenly identified her as an English poet. She wore shoes that went out of style after the First World War and she loved to read from her book of poems by English poets. Beyond that, Miss Maxwell loved the grammar of the English language. As a result of her teaching or failure to teach, I developed a loathing for the various parts of English grammar. If one could read and speak well, it seemed to me that identifying adverbs and pronouns was a secondary consideration. And so it is that at this date it is Miss Chicka, my wife, who from time to time has to tell me whether the word I am using is a verb or a noun. I am fairly well fixed on adjectives but the grammar of the rest of the Anglo-Saxon language is a matter that I still have to master.
A case in point involves television and radio announcers who in reporting on the current controversy on the health situation say that “I have referenced that earlier.” I don’t know whether referenced has become a verb but in any case it strikes me as being an awkward construction. What ever happened to saying that I referred to that previously? It may be that referencing in that construction is perfectly agreeable but it still falls hard on these ears. Rather than the “referenced” construction, my vote still goes to “I referred to that earlier.” As a matter of fact, there is no entry for referenced in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary that I keep behind my desk.
I much prefer a report that originated with Miss Chicka that in a collision between a truck and a car, the smaller car had to be “flat-bedded out of here.” That tells me the condition of the car and images go through my head of it being flat on the back of a trailer truck. Even Miss Maxwell could not improve upon that construction.
A third construction has to do with the word “gay.” The Irish, who speak the English language eloquently, often refer to events as both “grand and gay.” Those words are often found in Irish songs. They may say that the wedding was “grand and gay,” or that the cocktail hour that followed the meeting of the Dublin City Council was “grand and gay.”
But some time in the last 20 years, “gay” has come to identify male homosexuals. When the Irish sing that they have had a “grand and gay” time, they are not referring to male homosexuals.
Leaving gay people aside, now let me turn to a subject with which I am much more familiar. In 1925 the New York Yankees had a first baseman named Wally Pipp. For one reason or another, Wally Pipp decided that he needed a day off. The manager of the Yankees at that time was Miller Huggins, and he called on a substitute first baseman to fill in for Mr. Pipp. That first baseman was Lou Gehrig, who established a record for games played for the New York Yankees that stood until the 1990s.
As a matter of interest, Lou Gehrig started 2,130 consecutive games for the New York Yankees. Wally Pipp was subsequently traded to the Cincinnati Reds where he was identified as an important contributor to their offence for three years. In the end, I suppose that all is well if it ends well.
Miss Chicka, who is a quick study in the art of baseball terminology, reminded me that this was a noun turned into a verb. To say that somebody is “Wally Pipped” is to say that he never got his job back. I think that is an excellent construction in the language of the Anglo-Saxons and should be enshrined along with flatbedded as examples of elegant speech.
The final entry in this update on the language of the Anglo-Saxons has to do with the word “feckless.” For many years I have read and written about someone making a “feckless” gesture. Now feckless means having no worth or no value. Being a curious sort of person, I wondered where “feckless” came from. Obviously, there had to be word named “feck.” As it turns out, there is such a word and it is spelled “fek.” It means exactly what we thought it would mean in that it has to do with worth or value. According to what I am told, the word “fek” is an ancient Scottish word which I must assume is of Scottish-Gaelic origin. It is a curious thing that the word “fek” or “feck” has not survived to this day but we do have the English language expression “feckless.” It seems to me that this is a reverse “Wally Pipped” occasion. Feckless has survived but the original word “fek” is no longer in use. That is pretty much what happened when Lou Gehrig took over the first base duties for the New York Yankees.
I had not intended for this small essay to be a tour de force in the language spoken by the descendants of the Anglo-Saxon race. These are a few simple thoughts that occurred to your old essayist and he finds that they must be recorded or they will be forgotten. In the future when these random thoughts about the language that we speak occur to me, I will try to record them so that history will know that my efforts as an essayist were not feckless.
E. E. CARR
October 26, 2009
Essay 416
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Kevin’s commentary: One of my favorite language essays, primarily for this discussion near the end. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to look up what a “fek” was but it of course makes sense that there should be such a thing. I also feel like my baseball education has been lacking; I’d never encountered the “Wally Pipped” expression before.