A list-full

 First published in Column 8 on the 3^rd July, 1991. This is the original version of the column – a later rewrite for a now defunct revenue share site, Triond, appears elsewhere on this blog.

When the television series, The Story of English, was shown some time ago, I was so enthusiastic about it that I videoed it each week at a friend’s house – even though we didn’t even own a VCR. The series only confirmed what I think about the English language – that, like Muhammad Ali, it’s The Greatest.

However, in the course of much study over many years, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some omissions in the language, even though it’s as ever-expanding as the Universe.

English lacks a number of what could be quite useful words, particularly in the suffix departments labelled ‘ful’ and ‘less.’

To get started, take the word ‘wrongful.’ We use this in relation to a person being unjustly arrested. Surely the word should be ‘wrongless.’ If you’ve done nothing wrong, then how can your arrest be described as wrong-full?

We think of certain kinds of marriage as ‘loveless.’ Why then don’t we call those marriages that last for 50 or 60 years – you know the Darby and Joan kind that get reported in the paper – as loveful? What about the person who wins several prizes at once in Lotto? Isn’t he luckful? (If ever I have occasion to possess a Lotto ticket, I can always be described by the more familiar ‘luckless.’)

And don’t we often wish that politicians were more speechless than speechful, letting us a truthful earful?

Isn’t it curious that we describe certain kinds of sunless rooms as airless, when in fact only a vacuum can be airless. All rooms are airful, though not all are sunful.

One of the most commonly used adjectives is ‘awful,’ which is a shortened form of what used to be a word of great strength: ‘awe-ful,’ meaning full of awe. It would be far more accurate to describe most awful things these days by the opposite adjective. We should be using that awkward little squashed down word, ‘awless.’

Turning to another awless area of life, dentists must  be pleased that we are toothful rather than toothless. Equally, chiropodists should be pleased with footful people – even if they are wearing footless tights or fingerless gloves. (Actually haven’t you thought how much more couth it would be to give someone a fingerful rather than a fistful? Though I’m usually pretty fistless when it comes to such occasions.)

I’m sure the peaceful would like to see a lot more hateless people around them, while most mothers would be grateful for willess children, rather than grateless and wilful ones. (When you use the word ‘willess,’ however, you can see why it’s never really made the grade.)

Actually I was being truthless when I said that I’d made a lengthy study of this matter. These endful curiosities first distracted me in the middle of listening one morning at church to an otherwise interesting sermon.

It was there that I saw we’ve managed to retain some twin words. Even in our less than Godful society we still have sinful and sinless, faithful and faithless, graceful and graceless, joyful and joyless, fearful and fearless.

How come all these kept their partners, when lustful has no lustless, or topless no topful, or bottomless no bottomful? (The mind boggles.)

I guess they were successful instead of successless.

P.S. I didn’t do all this on my own – my daughter helped me listfully.

 

Darby and Joan statue in the ward of Ancoats and Beswick, UK
courtesy Oliver Dixon

I don’t remember ever seeing the Story of English series again on those video recordings. No doubt by the time we got a VCR, they’d gone AWOL on us – or we'd unwittingly copied over them.

It occurs to me, now, that patients wearing footless tights would actually be helpful to a chiropodist, and the way I write about Darby and Joan marriages here makes it sound as though they're rare. But no longer: even my own marriage is into its 52nd year. 

In case the minds of American readers are boggling, they should note that the spellings are all British ones, as is normal in New Zealand, where this piece first appeared.