Saturday, September 4, 2010

THE BLUNDER BOARD -- Message 6

From the United Kingdom:

I draw your attention to another imbecility: p. 331, "...to hearken back to at least one ancient source." Your author is beyond assistance.

The Reader replies: Reader #1 had highlighted this howler, but because of space limitations we didn't comment during Pistrina's sojourn in Anthony Cekada's Blunderland. Our feckless author just doesn't know that the preferred form of the idiom is hark back, originally a phrase from hunting, which refers to hounds' retracing their course to pick up a lost scent. Perhaps Anthony was confused by the many instances of "hearken to," which we find in the Douay Bible (e.g., 2K 12: 18, "he would not hearken to our voice").

None of us at Pistrina Liturgica had ever heard or seen this barbarity until we read WHH. However, in justice, we note that Webster's Third International and the The New Oxford American Dictionary both have an entry for "hearken back." Oxford tells us it's "another way of saying hark back (see HARK)." The non-standard form certainly arose from a confusion typical of the semi-literate. As we've argued, Fr. Cekada has never associated with the kind of people who speak and write "privileged" English, so it's natural that he knows only non-standard forms of phrases. We hate to say it again, but he should have hired a literate editor.

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