What the Feck?

What the heck is a feck?

Here's the answer, straight from Dictionary.com:

feck — n obsolete  (Scot)

1. worth; value
2. amount; quantity
3. The greater part; the majority

(Scottish dialect) Fek, short for effect

from <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feck>

The more common adjective that's derived from feck is feckless, meaning ineffectual or worthless. So?

Well, this is one of those oddments that I find crawling around in the dimmer corners of my mind for no apparent reason. Turns out that my idle contemplation of feckless led me to wonder what feck meant. Somehow, back in the shadows, feck tripped over a similar archaic word that I came across many years ago in Latin class. I wondered if there were any relationship between feck and fex, and hence, any correlation between feckless and fexless. Hmmm.

Urbandictionary.com defines fex thusly:

fex - Turd. Fex (or faex) is the singular of the Latin word feces (or faeces). Although feces has entered English as a mass noun, fex retains the original meaning of a single, discrete piece of shit.

from <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=feces%20weight>

Ooooookay, except for the fact that both feck and fex are obsolete, one could argue that there isn't really a correlation between the two nouns. However, without wading too deeply into the etymology of euphemisms referring to excreta (nasty thought, that), I feel that there is a certain similarity between the adjectives feckless and fexless. Never mind that the root nouns are pretty much opposites (value vs. poop). Also, never mind that fexless didn't exist as an adjective, as far as I know, until I dreamed it up just now. Even my sainted mother knew the term "scared shitless," which - leaving out the physical connotations - refers to a near-paralytic state of terror. Seems to me that a person suffering from this condition has become ineffectual, and it's not too much of a stretch to translate this as feckless. Or fexless.

Therefore, feck <> fex, but feckless = fexless.


This semantic exercise has become thoroughly feckless, to say nothing of pure fex. What the feck?

"Slanky" Deconstructed

My SO occasionally refers to the Slanky, an enormous fleece sack with arms. On the surface, it's the ultimate couch potato sack. Beyond that, it's way better than "not tonight, I have a headache." The subliminal message is "nope, not tonight, not ever. And don't even think about asking me to get up and fetch something for you. How can I walk in this thing? I'd fall down and kill myself. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you???"

Yep. Hostile.

I had to give some thought to how such a product ever came to market, much less appeared in the respected offerings of Amazon.com. Finally I realized that the clue was in the product's name: Slanky. At first look, one might think that it's a hybrid of sleeper (or slumber) and blankie, a well-known childhood comfort word. That would give it a cuddly, soothing connotation, which doesn't seem to be what's happened - at least, not as I perceive it. Nope, here's what my research has revealed:

Slanky is, in fact, a hybrid of Skanky, Cranky, and Sleazy. More than mere adjectives, these are actually names. The familiar tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has a little-known back-story. It seems that the original band of dwarfs numbered ten, not seven, and included the aforementioned Skanky, Cranky, and Sleazy.

The dwarf team, cognizant of good business practice, was going through the four steps of team evolution: forming, storming, norming, and performing. The forming stage had brought the ten dwarfs together for the purpose of developing a new, improved mining process. The next phase, storming, is when each team member's characteristics, big ideas, and talents are asserted. Typically, there is some friction as team members jostle for attention - this usually is positive and creative in the long run. Ideally, the storming phase produces a general realization of the gathered abilities of the members, and at this point the team settles into the norming phase, working out how they will go forward together into the performing phase, which is self-explanatory (Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go).

Well, in this case the storming phase was downright tempestuous. Skanky, Cranky, and Sleazy made no secret of their contempt for the other team members. Despite the declared purpose of the team, to improve the dwarf mining operations, the dissident trio wanted to develop commercial products that would require a budget-busting bucket of start-up capital in order to outsource production to the Munchkins, who had stunningly low labor rates, as well as a great work ethic. Never mind that these commercial products had absolutely nothing to do with mining, dwarf-managed or otherwise.

Quite properly, Doc, the team leader, dismissed the dissidents as incurably disruptive, and the remaining seven dwarfs went on to write their place in fairy-tale history. Skanky, Cranky, and Sleazy formed a new team for the purpose of developing the aforesaid products for mass markets. In the way of such projects, they attracted venture capital, outsourced production, and brought to market a plethora of unusual products to enrich our contemporary culture. Among them are Louie the Large Mouth Bass, the Snuggie NFL Pillow, Pajama Jeans, the Sofa Butler, the Big Top Donut giant donut baker, the Video Camera Pen (how much fun could you have with this?), and oh, so many more! But their flagship product, their proudest achievement and namesake, is the Slanky.

Now you know.