harrumphery

Another week, another eructation of harrumphery about the parlous state of today’s youth published on one opinion page or another to be passed around as the latest hate-read. The jeremiad fulminates against the current decadent generation of whippersnappers, so horribly coddled and disrespectful and feckless, simultaneously inert and destructive, passive and insolent. The criticisms are all familiar, having been harrumphed by various curmudgeonly harruncles for as long as there have been people willing to publish them. It is the regular round of exgramination (get-off-my-lawn-ery) as grunted and burbled in the huffing tones of the most walrus-like of people.

Indeed, the particular characteristic of harrumphery is that its rumbled disgruntlement insistently affects a kind of gravitas that devolves into gravy-toss. When you harrumph, you take the posture of one whose social status is assured, one whose presence is the opposite of callow, one who – after abundant clearing of the throat – insists on elevated elocutions and would never be so undignified as to utter a vulgarism. So what if the harrumphing is incoherent, inconsistent, just a rehashing of unoriginal psychosocial dyspepsia assembled harum-scarum (or rather harumph-scarumph)? Harrumphery claims the earned right to supersede scrutiny. It is the harrumpher who is scrutatious!

Oh, speaking of scrutiny, and of things done harum-scarum: there is the question of how many r’s there are in this word. In point of fact, while neither spelling – harrumphery or harumphery – is to be found in dictionaries, both are to be found in use, the former somewhat more than the latter. I favour the double r, but not just on the basis of frequency. For one thing, if you search harrumphery on Google, Google wants to assume you meant harrumphed, whereas if you search harumphery, Google wants to assume you meant Humphrey. What a boggart! But more to the point, the doublet rr better conveys the phlegmatic onomatopoeia, and it adds just that much extra weight to the word. But of course the single-r version is no less legitimate, just as the single-r versions of the others – harumph, for example – are established alternatives to the double-r ones.

But, yes, this is a word that may become its own target: language grouches might insist it’s not a word at all. It’s not in their ledgers of lexical legislation! That means nothing, though. The word is, as noted, in use; and when I first used it above, I feel sure you knew on the instant what it meant. If you know harrumph – as you do, I am sure – and if you know the suffix -ery, as in cookery, mockery, and so on, then this confection is clear enough. So let it be used. We shall surely have repeated use for it, every time another geyser-like eruption issues forth from the harrumpherate (it would accord them too much style to call them the harrumpherati).