OPINION- Guest writer

In fraught times

Different f-word resurfaces

Language, especially word usage, is changing before our wondering eyes! Much less, our (ahem) fraught ears.

Take the word "fraught." In a February edition of the Saline Courier, David Shribman's column header read, "Governing in fraught times." I clipped the editorial. Either before or after this, I had noted other phrases with the "f" word: "have proved fraught" (New York Times, Facebook), "after fraught awards."

More recently, I saw, in Jonathan Martin's New York Times online article, this sentence from Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma: "This ([Obamacare fix] is fraught with difficulties, no doubt about it."

My Webster's New World Portable Large Print Dictionary (gift of a similarly aged friend) defines "fraught" simply (for us oldsters, I suppose) as "filled [with]."

Recently, I wrote, "Awaking from fraught dreams," which I did--at midmorning!

In the meantime, I asked Cortana about the usage of "fraught." She led me to a six-page discussion based on this question: "Is it OK to say such-and-such is fraught--full stop? In a case where the context makes it clear what it's fraught with?"

Part of @Brillig's answer explained it this way: "It's an archaic word that survives ... mainly through the idiom 'fraught with.' It would be okay to use outside the idiom form if you were, for instance, doing a play about the 18th century and wanted to say the ship was filled with cargo. 'The ship be fraught, mateys!'

"However, using it today outside the idiom form would be like using spake or thou or sayeth--it's not a crime but people will probably look at you strangely."

There is another sense of the word which is used sans "with," that of being anxious, stressed out, harassed.

Ben Zimmer's New York Times column "On Language" from May 21, 2010, points to the 1920s as first seeing the occurrences of "fraught" without even a hint of "with": "The earliest example I've found so far comes from a 1925 serialized story by Henry Leyford Gates about a flapper named Joanna. In one installment, Gates writes, 'It was Joanna who at last broke the fraught silence.'" More books, Zimmer noted, where "fraught silence" appears were from 1934, 1946 and 1958.

Other literary examples are mentioned in this online article, with "fraught" followed by "clouds," "soul," "days," "pause."

Here's even a prayer from "Unforgotten," in the book Genealogy of the Tapley Family (1900): "With folded hands and wistful eyes,/We look and listen, and ask to know/What would God have us realize/As the fraught days come and go?"

This is probably a prayer some of us could use in this present age and situation, which is fraught with terms like "fake news" and "alternative facts."

"With 'fake news,' Danielle Kurtz-leben of All Things Considered says, "Trump moves from alternative facts to alternative language." Fake news? Don Lemon of CNN defines that term as "when you put out a story to intentionally deceive someone and you know that the story is wrong."

The president himself put out some "fake news" at his Florida rally about something happening "last night" in Sweden. Oh, sure, he didn't intend to deceive, but it surely caused a ruckus. Not everyone in this world is "on to" the new phenomenon of "fake news, "alternative facts" and "alternative language" that is happening in this country.

Now, I need to transcribe that fraught dream that kept me working against my mother, who was planning--without planning--a bridesmaid's luncheon at her house in four days! I knew it couldn't be done and offered to help--and even pay--for the upgrading and decorating, but she'd have none of it.

I bowed out of the (ahem) "fraught" struggle and finally awoke.

At least I have a few new words and phrases to try to add to my writing. Perhaps more will surface before very long.

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Pat Laster of Benton is the author of three books and is working on a memoir.

Editorial on 05/06/2017

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