IS MY JACKET STRAIGHT?
Ignorant use of language is always irritating, especially when it leads to confusion of thought or communication, but the most annoying form is where the speaker or writer is trying to create an impression by using words and phrases which may sound splendid but which he has not bothered to master.
A common example of this is a jeering reference to some older female relative as 'straight-laced'. Quite where this lace is being worn, or how it is kept straight, has never been thought out. English has two similar but distinct words in this area.
'Straight' means not wandering from side to side; as in a straight line, which those skilled in geometry know as the shortest distance between two points. So you can twang a stretched chalked cord to mark out a straight line.
'Strait' comes from a different source and means narrow or restricted. If your elderly aunt wears a corset her maid can pull at the laced-up back until Aunt is restricted into a suitably narrow shape. Aunt may not be able to move with any ease, though, and the scope of her activities is limited. So, the phrase suggests, is her mind: strait-laced.
The Straits of Dover are a narrow seaway. A strait-jacket is a garment for restricting the movements of violent patients. People who are severely limited in cash may be thought of as being in dire straits. [I was heartened to see that the group who took this as a name at least knew how to spell it.]
This not the only use of fuddled imagery. Patients born with a split upper lip need surgery to correct the hare-lip, which is no impediment to a hare. What the user thought of as a hair-lip I can't imagine - a kind of intrusive moustache?
Playwrights construct plays, as a metal-worker constructs wrought iron. So the original Mr. Arkwright built arks, or ships; Mr.Wainright wains, or carts; a wheelwright wheels.
None of them needed to be able to write. So let us have no more playwrites.
You think I refer to non-existent blunders? Within the last month I have seen in B&Q's bathroom area printed containers of 'Sealing Tape for Sanitary Wear'. Investment companies have advised me to reign in my spending. A man has boasted of travelling about in a decade old Buick - the wrong pronunciation of the wrong word. They're out there all right, the vandals who trample on the English language.
