This column hails from McMinnville

I’m afraid I have to start off this column with yet another apology to a sharp-eyed reader. Austin Duke, and I hope that is the correct spelling Mr. Duke, since I’ve seen it spelled Austen, and getting that wrong too would be kind of like adding insult to injury. In any case, after reading my article on Robert and Dr. Mary Jane Jamieson becoming naturalized U.S. citizens, in which I wrote that the couple ‘hale from our nearest neighbor to the north, Canada.’

Mr. Duke was nice enough leave me a phone message pointing out my obvious error here, in that the correct term in this instance is ‘hail’ not ‘hale,’ which works fine if you’re referring to someone as being ‘hale and hearty.’

Unfortunately, to my chagrin, this fits in perfectly with recent my series of columns on commonly misused words and terms. And in fact, it was a similar error of mine that generated the first column on this subject.

In this case, as listed in the ‘Columbia Guide to Standard American English,’ the verb ‘hail’ means ‘to call out to, to welcome, to cheer, or to summon,’ and combined with ‘from’ becomes a common idiom, meaning ‘to come from, to have originated in.’

As in: ‘She hailed a cab,’ or, ‘He hails from Montana.’

‘Hale’ on the other hand, has only one current sense as a verb, ‘to compel (someone) to go.’

As in: ‘Her attorney haled him into court.’

As an adjective ‘hale’ means ‘vigorous, healthy.’

As in: ‘He’s a hale, well-preserved 80-year-old.’

I apologize to Mr. Duke, and my readers, for my error, made even more grievous since I profess a love for language and words.

But I would also like to point out that I have only claimed to be an aficionado of words, not an expert. In fact, as I explained in my previous columns, my own unfortunate tendency to make errors like this is the main reason I became interested in this particular subject in the first place.

And though this may seem self-serving at this point, I do know the correct usage of these two words, but the fingers flying automatically across the computer keyboard didn’t seem to care. The first spelling that came to mind was the one that ended up on the page. Sigh.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, I proofread the article. Twice. And still missed it. But fortunately for me, my readers didn’t. And believe me, I appreciate when those astute folks point out my mistakes just as much as I do when they point out my triumphs.

Well, maybe not quite as much, but pretty close. Well, fairly close.

Anyway, all kidding aside, I really do appreciate it. After all, it does provide some heavy duty encouragement to do better in the future. Keep it up all. Don’t let me slide. Keep me on my toes.

Oddly enough, following right along with this theme, a reader from North Carolina, Jim Moss, made a stop by the Standard during a visit to Warren County. Seems he has been following my columns on this subject and brought along some of his pet peeves.

One of those is when people use ‘scotch’ when referring to individuals from Scotland, rather than ‘Scottish’ or ‘Scots.’

‘Scotch is a drink,’ says Mr. Ross, ‘not a nationality.’

Mr. Ross was also somewhat amused when a hapless sports broadcaster used the phrase, ‘The Rams have won six consecutive games in a row without a loss.’ Thus heaping redundancy upon redundancy.

‘This kind of thing just drives me crazy,’ says Ross.

All I can say, with apologies to Mary Jane and Robert, is I hope he didn’t read my story on the Jamiesons.

Charlie Johnson is news editor of the Standard and can be reached at 473-2191.