Feckless

Q From Lee Burough in Colorado Springs, USA: We’ve never heard the word feckless here in our part of the USA. Yet we hear it occasionally in BBC television productions. What is its origin? Why isn’t it used here?

A These days it’s not particularly common anywhere, I would guess, though I’m surprised it has completely vanished from your part of the world; on the other hand, it does tend to appear more often in writing than in speech, and to my ear it does sound a touch old-fashioned. It’s an excellent example of a word for which only the negative now exists; some other examples are gormless, ruthless, and hapless. At first feck was a Scots word, a cropped form of effect, so to say that a person is feckless is to describe them as ineffective. But it also suggests more strongly that a person is lazy, incompetent, unreliable, or irresponsible. It’s a powerful word, one it would be good to keep in the language. Try using it a few times — perhaps you’ll persuade people to take it up again ...