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My Dudgeon
01/06/2006 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
There is a word you hear occasionally that really exemplifies a state of mind, says Mark. Do you like the word dudgeon? Do you know what it means? I think that may be a test of age. If you are young you probably have never heard of the word. My Dudgeon (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
There is a word you hear occasionally that really exemplifies a state of mind. Do you like the word "dudgeon"? Do you know what it means? I think that may be a test of age. If you are young you probably have never heard of the word. If it is recognized at all it is probably by the over-forty set. My dictionary says it is "a fit or state of angry indignation usually provoked by opposition; ill humor, resentment." Another says "Extreme displeasure caused by an insult or slight: huff, miff, offense, pique, resentment, ruffled feathers, umbrage." I don't think that is quite as accurate.
Because that seems to imply it was aimed at the person who is miffed. "Miff" is another good word. You can take umbrage at something not at all intended for you specifically, but it still gets your goat. But you rarely hear of just normal dudgeon. What you hear about his "high dudgeon." High dudgeon is something that started with a pet peeve. Years ago it may have been just a peeve. And you pointed it out to the world. You hoped that pointing out the problem would do some good. But it spite of what they tell you, in a lot of things one person *cannot* make a difference. The world went right on doing what it had been doing. And the pet peeve festered. Oh, we've got lots of good words today. There are lots of good words about anger. It festered. The peeve went from being your pet to you being its. It got worse in the same way an injury does. And slowly you went from being peeved to being in high dudgeon. And the world ignored you. A world has no shoulders to shrug, but if it did it would have. And people don't change.
My dad had his share of peeves that he would complain about. There was the word "hood". Not the kind of hood that you have on a jacket, but as a sense of a hooligan. My dad would comment whenever anybody used that word that it was pronounced wrong. Most people pronounce the word like it was the part of a jacket. They rhymed the word with good. My father would explain that the word was a short form of hoodlum.
And in hoodlum the first syllable rhymes with "rude." So if you used the world hood to mean hoodlum you should pronounce it to rhyme with "rude." Of course there are people who pronounce hoodlum with the first syllable rhyming with "good," but I think my dad would have thought that was a mispronunciation also. My dad may have even been right in theory, but being right is not all it takes to convince the world to do things differently. This was just one of many peeves that was working its way to high dudgeon.
They say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I have my own list of pet peeves. Some of the readers may have heard me say this before. It keeps coming back. That is what makes it a pet peeve. That is the power of a peeve and even more of a high dudgeon, it is hard to let go of. Every time you see the thing that caused the irritation in the first place, it will get worse. These things do not go away and do not get better. So I have my share of pet peeves.
Charlie Harris sent me a quote from a web page:
"From an order form for 8mm to DVD transfer:
Per foot .8¢: x foot = Exact Copy - Please see below. Per foot .14¢ x foot = Edited Copy with Video Effects."
I don't know if the character set of your PC handles this properly but the symbol after the 8 and the 14 is a cent-sign. And of course the symbol in front of the numbers is a decimal point. ".14¢" means one tenth of a cent plus 4 one-hundredths of a cent. Those total to considerably less than a cent. Now from context I can guess that the person who put this together did not mean to say considerably less than a cent. What he intended was 14¢ or $.14. Those are two expressions for the same amount of money. $.14 means one tenth of a dollar plus 4 one-hundredths of a dollar.
The period helps to make the number look small because you have a dollar sign in front. The cent sign also helps make the number look small because you do not use the dollar sign. You get your choice. You can use one or the other. But people seem to think that you can make prices look smaller by using both the cent AND the decimal point. It doesn't work that way. Do you hear me, World? IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. THIS WILL NOT PASS ".14¢" is less than a penny. ".8¢" is as bad or even worse. It means 8/10 of a cent.
Now I can accept that words might change their pronunciation over the years. That is a matter of style. What started as mispronunciation may become the accepted way to pronounce a word. That is not decadence, it is just style. I can give people some slack on that. But to say that .14¢ is the same as 14¢ or $.14 is either to say that one cent is the same thing as a dollar, or to say that 0.14 = 14. To accept one or the other is more slack than I can give.
Yet, in spite of my best efforts this *evil* practice not only continues, it spreads. Just last week I went through a grocery store produce section and one after another the little hand- written signs with the prices all misstated the price as being 1/100th of what the cashier would have charged me. You see it in libraries where signs proclaim the overdue charge to be .25¢ a day. A library is supposed to be repository of knowledge, not ignorance. In United State National Parks I see signs that the printed trail guides cost .30¢. What is going on here?
Well, I have had enough of it. I point these things out to the people, frequently they correct the error, and two more places start making the error. A hamburger chain advertises its "new .99¢ menu." Jeez! Long ago my peeve turned into a dudgeon. Now I am turning my dudgeon up to high. You aren't going to lick me, World!
Mark R Leeper
(c) Mark R Leeper 2006
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