The summer of 2020 ends today.
Thank God. What a strange season. No travel. No ballgames. No family barbecues. A summer of masks and anxiety.
And yet; there were definite highlights.
Most nights, when our work was done, my wife and I would go walking in the Chicago Botanic Garden. It seemed important, and was relaxing, although not without its own set of challenges. When you walk in, under the trellis of flowers, you are presented with a choice: break left, toward the Rose Garden, or right, proceeding along the lagoon, or straight, toward the orchard.
"Which way?" my wife would ask, unless I asked first.
"If I had my druthers..." I began once.
"What's a druther?" my wife asked, interrupting me.
I stopped, mouth open. I had no idea. I've been saying it ... forever. But what does the word mean? From the context, I'd say "choice." It sounds kinda British. A good name for a character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. "Jeeves, prepared for a weekend at Lord Druthers' estate in Cambury!"
I had a presentiment, pulling down the "D-E" volume of the Oxford that it wouldn't be there, and it wasn't: straight from "drut" an obscure term for "Darling, love, friend" to "Druvy" a varient of Drovy "turbid, not clear or transparent."
Not in the Oxford. A regional term, then? An Ohioism? No...couldn't be. Not in the American Heritage either. Am I spelling it right? Could it be, oh, "durothers?" No.
Okay, time to cheat and go online. Merrian Webster: "free choice: PREFERENCE —used especially in the phrase 'if one had one's druthers.'"
Thank God. What a strange season. No travel. No ballgames. No family barbecues. A summer of masks and anxiety.
And yet; there were definite highlights.
Most nights, when our work was done, my wife and I would go walking in the Chicago Botanic Garden. It seemed important, and was relaxing, although not without its own set of challenges. When you walk in, under the trellis of flowers, you are presented with a choice: break left, toward the Rose Garden, or right, proceeding along the lagoon, or straight, toward the orchard.
"Which way?" my wife would ask, unless I asked first.
"If I had my druthers..." I began once.
"What's a druther?" my wife asked, interrupting me.
I stopped, mouth open. I had no idea. I've been saying it ... forever. But what does the word mean? From the context, I'd say "choice." It sounds kinda British. A good name for a character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. "Jeeves, prepared for a weekend at Lord Druthers' estate in Cambury!"
I had a presentiment, pulling down the "D-E" volume of the Oxford that it wouldn't be there, and it wasn't: straight from "drut" an obscure term for "Darling, love, friend" to "Druvy" a varient of Drovy "turbid, not clear or transparent."
Not in the Oxford. A regional term, then? An Ohioism? No...couldn't be. Not in the American Heritage either. Am I spelling it right? Could it be, oh, "durothers?" No.
Okay, time to cheat and go online. Merrian Webster: "free choice: PREFERENCE —used especially in the phrase 'if one had one's druthers.'"
Another online dictionary pegged it as "Informal—North American." That's us! Particularly this summer. I never put on a tie or a suit jacket, not once. I think I put on khakis once.
But where did the word come from? Webster's read my mind:
Druther is an alteration of "would rather." "Any way you druther have it, that is the way I druther have it," says Huck to Tom in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Detective. This example of metanalysis (the shifting of a sound from one constituent of a phrase to another) had likely been around for some time in everyday speech when Twain put those words in Huck's mouth. By then, in fact, druthers had already become a plural noun, so Tom could reply, "There ain't any druthers about it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers." Druthers is essentially a dialectal term and it tends to suggest an informality of tone, but in current use it doesn't necessarily suggest a lack of sophistication or education.
Whew, that's a relief. Or should I say a disappointment, given how popular abandonment of both sophistication and education have become. Too late now to try to fake our way into the uneducated crowd: just this morning my wife and I spent a while discussing the etymology of the expression "Oh my." My suspicion is that it's what's known as a "minced oath." A digression I'll save for another day.