Thread: Just a thought

Hmmm, just this morning I described someone as gormless (a Melbourne driver of course), then realised that I had never heard of the word gorm by itself

Feck (or fek or feic) is a form of effeck, which is in turn the Scots cognate of the modern English word effect. However, this Scots noun has additional significance:

1. Efficacy; force; value; return
2. Amount; quantity (or a large amount/quantity)
3. The greater or larger part (when used with a definite article)

From the first sense we derive feckless, meaning witless, weak or ineffective; worthless; irresponsible; indifferent; lazy.

gormless


from mid 18th century (originally as gaumless ): from dialect gaum ‘understanding’ (from Old Norse gaumr‘care, heed’) + -less.

Originally Posted by burraboy

Feck (or fek or feic) is a form of effeck, which is in turn the Scots cognate of the modern English word effect. However, this Scots noun has additional significance:

1. Efficacy; force; value; return
2. Amount; quantity (or a large amount/quantity)
3. The greater or larger part (when used with a definite article)

From the first sense we derive feckless, meaning witless, weak or ineffective; worthless; irresponsible; indifferent; lazy.

Actually knew all that! Looked it up years ago when it struck me as an odd sort of word.

A Gormless Feck and you really have a doozy.

Originally Posted by rustynail

A Gormless Feck and you really have a doozy.

Wouldn't the two sort of cancel each other out?

While it's often maintained that the word doozy derives from the "Duesenberg" in the name of the famed Duesenberg Motor Company, this is impossible on chronological grounds. Doozy was first recorded (in the form dozy) in eastern Ohio in 1916, four years before the Duesenberg Motor Company began to manufacture passenger cars; the related adjective doozy, meaning "stylish" or "splendid," is attested considerably earlier, in 1903. So where did doozy come from? Etymologists believe that it's an altered form of the word daisy, which was used especially in the late 1800s as a slang term for someone or something considered the best.

Not necessarily the best. More "outstanding" or "noticeable." This allows the term to describe an inferiority as much as a superiority.