It’s a screwed-up world for columnist Joe Bennett

Columnist Joe Bennett has been upbraided by readers for having the temerity to throw out his pile of screws, washers and other fixings from his garage clean-up.

Last week, I wrote about reorganising the few and unimpressive tools I use for my few and unimpressive bouts of DIY. Two readers wrote to upbraid me.

Fine word, ‘upbraid’, and an ancient one. It derives from the Old English verb ‘upbregdan’, which in turn derives from some earlier source that lies beyond the reach of scholars because it was never written down. To upbraid is to reproach or chide.

Fine word, ‘chide’, as well. It too derives from an Old English verb, ‘cidan’, meaning to reproach or scold. The Old English went in for a lot of scolding. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the word ‘scold’ has a similar lineage.

And so it proves. The phrasal verb ‘to scold’ can be traced back to Old Norse. They were a critical lot, those ancient Scandinavians, those Vikings, those raiders of the North Sea. They spoke their minds and didn’t worry greatly about hurting others’ feelings. Indeed, one suspects this was a period of history when feelings were not highly valued.

Anyway, as I say, two readers wrote to upbraid me. The spur for their upbraiding was my admission last week that in the act of cleaning out my garage, I gathered up a thousand remnant washers, screws and other fixings that had accrued over the decades and that I had kept in the forlorn hope they might one day come in handy, and threw every one of them out. Both readers were keen to let me know that only a fool does that, and that I’d soon regret my action. They were especially indignant about the screws.

The upbraiders are right in one way, of course. The single sure-fire way to find a use for any remnant washer, screw, or fixing is to throw it away. But at the same time, as I pointed out in the column, for any remnant washer, screw or fixing to come in handy, it helps to know which washers, screws and fixings you have in your collection, because there are few more dispiriting ways to spend an afternoon than going through a thousand remnant washers, screws and fixings in search of one particular beast and finding, after all, you haven’t got it. So, henceforth, I shall just head to the hardware store each time to buy what’s needed from scratch.

Fine word, ‘scratch’, and another example of the onomatopoeic nature of English. Scratch sounds scratchy. The phrase ‘from scratch’ derives from a start-line scratched in the dirt, behind which competitors in a race must stand unless they are receiving some sort of advantage. So, to ‘start from scratch’ is to start from the very beginning, without help or advantage. It is for this reason that having a handicap of zero makes you a scratch golfer. All of which is stuff I didn’t know when I got up this morning, and I gathered every bit of it, along with the etymological material above, from the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

I’m on my third Concise. The previous two fell apart from use. Most of that use has been to confirm a meaning, or, as above, to research etymology. But there is also the pleasure of simply opening the thing and seeing where it takes me - the pleasure of serendipity. And now, of course, I have looked up serendipity and discovered it was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 in his fairy story The Three Princes of Serendip. And Serendip is an old name for Sri Lanka. Did you know that?

My point is, then, that I’d rather spend time sifting serendipitously through the OED than sifting despondently through a remnant pile of washers, screws and fixings in the hope of finding the one I need to complete some paltry DIY project.

Fine word, ‘paltry’. It derives from the Low German word for rubbish, is defined as worthless, contemptible or trifling, and could not be improved upon as a descriptor of my few and unimpressive bouts of DIY.