Words I Love

Dictionary.com gives two definitions of “feckless”:

1. ineffective; incompetent; futile: feckless attempts to repair the plumbing.
2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy.

I’m more interested in the second definition, because I like CALLING someone feckless, especially to their face. It’s an insult! It’s like calling someone a child, except using a word a feckless person wouldn’t understand, so it’s twice as insulting because then they’re stupid in addition to being lazy.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, feckless is from 16th-century Scottish, I presume because the Scots were all calling each other this. If you’ve ever met a Scot, you’d know why. (I kid of course. How could you call a nation feckless that’s given us penicillin, logarithms, AND the US Navy? …according to Wikipedia.)

Think carefully. You know a lot of feckless people, don’t you? (Most of them Scots )