We must reck the difference between wreak and wreck

To “wreck havoc” is a frequent allegation by Kenya’s English-language print media.

For instance, they habitually accuse rain of “wrecking havoc” to human property all over the place. In this way, our English-language journalism blatantly confuses between the verb to wreck and the verb to wreak.

Yet to wreak, not to wreck, was what one Daily Nation scribbler had in mind the other day.

To wreak and to wreck differ again from to “reck”, a word I frequently come across in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

POETS

A deeply religious English producer of verse, Hopkins complains that, though mankind’s “…generations have trod, have trod, have trod”, yet mankind refuses to “reck God’s rod”.

Here, to reck is a poetic form of the verb to recognise, especially religiously.

Since its coinage, English poets have used the verb to reck to mean what human throngs do in certain buildings in their plea to the deity.

To reck was a short form of the verb to recognise, especially reverentially. In most contexts, to reck remains to pay especial attention to the deity.

However, though pronounced exactly like to reck, to wreck (spelt with an initial “w”) is to destroy a system, exactly as torrential rains do to property in countries like ours, where production and storage are not yet based essentially on any real mastery of science and technology.

VERB

Yet whenever rain “wrecks” even “havoc” — as so many of East Africa’s journalists and other users of English allege — we should rejoice because havoc is a perilous social condition that truly needs to be ruthlessly wrecked.

Any government truly committed to social order, peace and efficiency will consider havoc as its enemy numero uno.

Yet, if havoc is a wreck — namely, a social disorder — the question becomes glaring.

Where you have wrecked all havoc, why should I voice any more concern? The answer: It is because you have used the wrong verb.

Not wreck (pronounced exactly like reck) but wreak (pronounced like reek) was the verb that eluded our newspaper scribbler.

RAINFALL

Yet mightn’t rain help our government to “wreck” the murder, rape and robbery situation that besets especially East Africa’s urban areas?

Hence the question: If — as the term implies — homo sapiens sapiens is “all knowing”, why do human beings the whole world over behave exactly like the mindless meat-eating denizens of all of our so-called “national parks”?

Certainly, heavy rains — like those of East Africa — often cause terrible havoc to humanity and its property and habitats.

Torrential downpours even destroy our homesteads and vital sources of food. But, though the words wreak and wreck imply the same tragedy, please do reck the difference between to wreak and to wreck.

The word reck is beloved, especially of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the profoundly religious 19th-century English poet, whose mastery and use of the English language in versification is captivating and may, nevertheless, sway even the non-religious mind that mine is.

Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist. [email protected]