The Court of Peeves, Crotchets and Irks opens its autumn assizes with a motion from several readers to ban “went missing.” The court is sitting in its affable mode. Motion granted! “Went missing” must go.

Dee Volpe of Lakeland, Fla., cites Star magazine for reporting that “David Arquette and DMX went missing on the set of their film.” The Star also let us know that the parents of Laci Peterson have been grieving “since she went missing on Christmas Eve.”

Nan Patton Ehrbright of Waveland, Miss., offers in evidence a story from The Dallas Morning News about the apparent murder of Patrick Dennehy. A suspect in the case was acting oddly “before Dennehy went missing.”

Arlene Scott of St. Augustine, Fla., cites a story from The Associated Press in July about a gun dealer who lost his license. One of his guns was among dozens of weapons “that went missing from Bull’s Eye …”

On its own motion the court will submit a headline from the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News about the cloning of an extinct carnivore: “Tasmanian tiger went extinct in 1936.”

The question before the court is therefore, “How can it plausibly be said that guns and suspects went missing, and an Australian tiger went extinct?” The short answer is that nothing in the rules of English composition requires that idioms be plausible – or even grammatical. The venerable H.W. Fowler noted that the closest possible translation of the Greek “idiom” is “a manifestation of the peculiar.” To say that a ship “all but capsized” is to fall into idiomatic speech. We act “on the spur of a moment”; we complain that things are “neither here nor there” – they happen “once in a blue moon.” Idioms, all of them.

Returning to the motion to ban, the court will enjoin “went missing” in all its variations, not because a person cannot logically “turn up missing,” but rather because the idiom has worn out its novelty. That is the way with old cliches. Let us have some new cliches!

Kay Lewis of Langley, Wash., is among several petitioners who are irked by “preventative.” The court has ruled several times that “preventative” serves no purpose not already served by “preventive,” and the court is not impressed to learn that George Washington recommended a “preventative” for rheumatism in 1793. Syllables are precious. Waste them not!

All the same, the court recognizes a need to be cautious in sending some words off to exile. Robert Williams of Buffalo, N.Y., objects to “practicable” as a needless synonym for “feasible,” but his motion to ban must be denied. There is indeed a subtle difference between a proposal that is “feasible” and one that is “practicable.” If a building design is “practicable,” we talk to a contractor; this building can be built. But if a design is merely “feasible,” we’d better think about it.

Over the years, the Court of Peeves, Crotchets and Irks has given the heave-ho to “accountancy” as a highfalutin term for “accounting.” The court has enjoined a “medication” as merely one syllable and $25 more expensive than a “medicine,” and the court has frowned upon the kind of “methodology” used in that stupid analysis of court reporting. But we ought to be careful about banning a word just because it trots into currency in plumes and gaudy epaulets. There may be substance there.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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