An apology for bad grammar, non-standard construction

A text — which read: Rain wreaks havoc; not Rain wrecks havock — coming from a reader began my day as I woke up at nine o’clock in the morning. Without looking at the sprawling front page of New Age, I could figure out that we had printed ‘Rain wrecks havock’, and not ‘Rain wreaks havoc’, which appeared glaring in the morning light.

I hold no brief for this mistake — in fact, two mistakes as ‘wreak’ comes out as ‘wreck’ and ‘havoc’ as ‘havock’ — which can euphemistically be called a typo, or a typographical error, and for no other mistakes or typos that have got into print in New Age over these 12 years since its inception in 2003 (standard claimer: I, as the longest-serving ‘editing hand’ on the desk until a year ago, am credited or discredited with a large number of them, including famous ones such as ‘budget’ appearing ‘budged’ or making a river fly, ‘flew’, instead of flow, ‘flowed’, in the past tense, during our initial days, ‘city mayor’ came out as ‘city mayo’ under the very eyes of six editors, all having worked with newspaper production for more than a decade).

But it leaves the space for wondering how the mistakes crept in. Anyone with a working knowledge of the English language should know, that the phrase is ‘wreaking havoc’ (on) and not ‘wrecking’. Search returns on Google, which has these days become the poor man’s corpus to decide many linguistic matters, at least, by the discernible, only points to the usage.

As for ‘wreak’ (pronounced rhyming with reek), the rare verb which is more common in the UK variety of English means ‘to bring about’ or ‘to cause to happen’. ‘Wrought’, supposedly a past participle of the verb ‘to wreak’, which is a distant cousin (read: cognate) of ‘to wreck’ (pronounced rhyming with reck), has come to remain in common use in a select group of phrases or contexts such as ‘wrought iron’, a kind of iron alloy with a very low content of carbon as opposed to ‘cast iron’, or ‘overwrought,’ which means ‘exhausted by overwork; worked to excess’, someone overwrought works himself into this state, and in extended use, ‘over-excited, nervous, distraught’. But, linguistically speaking, ‘wrought’ is considered an archaic past-tense form of the verb ‘to work’.

‘To wreak’ is in all instances is ‘to bring about’, ‘to cause to happen’, ‘to make something happen’ or ‘to inflict’: storms wreak havoc on crops, authorities wreak their will on people, cyclones wreak destruction on cropland, or some people wreak vengeance, hate or anger on some others. While the past-tense form of the verb ‘to wreak’ is ‘wreaked’, in the case of havoc, ‘wrought havoc’ is, according to usage, an acceptable past form of ‘to wreak havoc,’ although somewhat deprecated.

‘Wreck’ has always been ‘the destruction of a ship at sea, such as shipwreck’, ‘something, especially a vehicle or building, that has been badly damaged or destroyed, such as the plane was reduced to a smouldering wreck’, and ‘a person whose physical or mental health or strength has failed’ as a noun and ‘to wreck’ has been ‘to cause the destruction of a ship’ or ‘to destroy or severely damage (a structure, vehicle or similar objects)’ as a verb.

On an interesting note, havoc was also ‘reeked’ in some places online. Google returns: ‘… a wet May… which reeked havoc on… tomato gardens’, or ‘The deadly twister that reeked havoc in Tuscaloosa.’ This mistake has, for certain, its origin in the pronunciation of ‘wreak’ (as reek), being confused with ‘reek’ by the people not properly linguistically attuned.

‘Havoc’ means ‘devastation’ and, therefore, ‘to wreak havoc’ is ‘to bring about devastation.’ Havoc, which derives from a French idiom, crier havoc, ‘to cry (or shout) “havoc!”’, can also be cried and even played. In the funeral speech, Anthony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar says: ‘Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, | With Ate by his side come hot from hell, | Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice | Cry “Havoc,” and let slip the dogs to war.’ Havoc may also reek, havoc may cause wreck, but ‘wrecking havoc’ and ‘reeking havoc’ are nonsensical.

But why ‘havock’? ‘Havock’ with the aitch usually in upper case, in the fringe English, of words that yet to earn places in formal dictionaries, is a nickname for someone that causes trouble, mischief, etc, or for something that causes problems and trouble, or people who cause damage to anything they touch or even get around — the oft-taught personification, in literature, of ‘havoc’.

‘Havoc’ — as generally perceived, at least in the headline in question, as rain strained life a way too bit, without causing any noticeable physical devastation — means chaos and ‘to wreck something’ is to put it into a state of chaos. Why the hullabaloo?

Having said all that, it is bad grammar and non-standard construction, till date, and pesky oversight of page and production editors, perhaps overwrought. But that does not count. Apologies… for the bad grammar, the non-standard phrase and the pesky oversight.

Akkas, Abu Jar M. (2015 Sept. 3) An apology for bad grammar, non-standard construction. New Age 8

Rev.: vi·vi·mmxxiii