The Court of Peeves, Crotchets and Irks opens its April assizes with a petition from Stephanie Jackel of Savannah, Ga. She is joined by Charles Evans of Taylors, S.C., in asking a permanent injunction against “preventative.” Their motion will be granted, and one more especially irksome irk accordingly will be abolished.

If “preventative” served any useful purpose not already served by “preventive,” the court would put on its tolerant robe, but even though the noun/adjective has been around since 1666, there is nothing good to be said of “preventative.” The unnecessary syllable functions like a hat on a donkey, not as ornament but as ornamentation. On its own motion, the court will enlarge its injunction to embrace “orientate” and “administrate,” as overweight expansions of trim and tidy verbs. Syllables are precious. We ought not to waste them.

Tom Mittler of Longview, Texas, and Paul Clark of Cincinnati ask the court for a definitive ruling on “concrete” and “cement.” Reader Mittler, a civil engineer, is irked by pictures that identify a concrete truck as a “cement mixer.” He explains: “Cement is a fine gray powder made from heating limestone. Concrete is a mixture of cement, water, gravel and sand.”

The court loves nice distinctions and regards “cement piling” as an especially ludicrous oxymoron. To say that the president’s course is set in cement is to suggest more ambivalence than fortitude. We have concrete reasons, not cement ones. Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says it is “pedantic” to object to a “cement sidewalk” or a “cement porch.” Maybe so, but “cement” is not a proper synonym for “concrete,” and writers should be proper unless there is some really good reason for being im.

Charlotte Sharpe of Columbus, Ohio, asks for a declaratory judgment on “myriad,” as in, “Ohio State has gone through a myriad of emotions during this football season.” At one time, the court believes, “myriad” had only one meaning; it meant “10,000.” That precise usage long ago yielded to the sense of “a great number.” The court regards “myriad” as a rhinestone word, flashy, show-offy, tacked on to a sentence like an ankle bracelet. Pfui!

The court will take under advisement a motion from James B. Strong of Olympia, Wash., to stop speaking of ships as “she.” He notes that the English language benefits from the grammatical absence of gender. Our nouns and pronouns treat neuter objects as neuter, neither masculine nor feminine. “We don’t have to learn ‘le’ or ‘la,’ or ‘der,’ ‘die,’ ‘das’ for each noun, but there is one glaring exception — ships!

“Who keeps the idiocy going? Journalists! They even write such strange things as, ‘The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is still in port, but she will depart on Tuesday.’ Abraham Lincoln, she?”

The court seeks advice. A vessel as huge as an aircraft carrier is undoubtedly an “it,” not a “she,” but the court is in doubt about schooners, ketches and yawls. The use of feminine pronouns for sailing ships is said to be quite old. It has been ungallantly suggested that the inflection stems from certain characteristics of the wind – fickleness, stubbornness, playfulness, willfulness – thought to be characteristic of the gentler sex.

The court is getting into deep water with the gentleman’s motion, and will take a week’s recess to think it over.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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