Relatively wordy

When you grow up with and live with a family of English majors with a sense of humor much of your e- mail has a grammatical flavor.

My niece, who had an English major before she became a veterinarian, had this problem recently. She said that she had bought a Weedeater recently and as soon as she got home from work she was going to use the tool. She said that while she was using the new equipment she would be eedeating. But her problem was, when she told her co-workers about her task the next day should she tell them that she weedate, or did she weedeated, or since she is from the Ozarks, did she weedet? Her mother, who is a retired English teacher, told her she should check with me.

I claim that since the tool is a Weedeater, then when she was using it she was a weedeaterer or maybe a weedeaterist. But to be on the safe side I e-mailed my daughter in Texas who has a degree in English and does a lot of editing of correspondence in her job.

She said that Dr. Ruth was using a Weedeater. She was not eating the weeds, but using the tool to eat the weeds. She said that since she was a purist about the English language she wouldn't cotton to using a noun as a verb! In the meantime the weeds are still growing.

I thought maybe Ruth could give them a lick and a promise since she was so busy in her practice. But that opened up a whole new chapter. When you give something a lick and a promise you only do it halfway telling yourself you will complete the job later. But why is it a lick that you give? Does that refer back to another saying that you will have to lick your calf over when a job wasn't done properly? A mother calf will lick her newborn until it gets dry. I suppose if she was interrupted she might have to do the job over again. Then had she given the calf a lick and a promise? If that is the basis for the saying then why did the old-time parents give their child a licking for punishment? And why did they preface the threat with the word "good"? I am sure the child saw nothing good in the whipping when told a "good licking" was in the future.

But that same child in a race with a friend could sometimes boast that he would lick the other because he could run faster. Maybe if the race was in the country they could race to the salt lick. If they try to gather any of the salt to take home they should just get a lick because if they got too much it would be hard to carry. And they would need to get home on time or they would sure get a licking. But if they are on time maybe they could be rewarded by getting an ice cream cone to lick.

Actually I don't give a lick about any of these sayings because it's more fun to invent new ones. With the cell phones and computers taking over the world we are all needing to learn a whole new vocabulary. When I fuss about the geeks who invented all of these gadgets using words we already know but using them in new contexts, I have to think back to the mysteries of some of our old sayings that maybe made sense once but don't anymore.

So we will let the weeds grow until we get the Weedeater out. That should lick that job in a hurry. Let's agree just not to talk about it anymore.