Armentrude lives in language of red tape

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

Books about words are favorites of for the people. Dictionaries are fun in a pinch. But best of all are books such as Paul Dickson's Family Words which deal with those that aren't familiar but perhaps should be, or special constructions that someone probably came up with on the spur of the moment, such as "boyhattan," a word that comes from Cincinnati and refers to a nonalcoholic drink (unlike a Manhattan) ordered "by boys who would be too embarrassed to order a Shirley Temple."

The world can survive with or without "boyhattan." But that may not be the case with "armentrude," a very useful word that, according to Dickson, "came into being and died with the Washington Star," the newspaper that happens to have been a forerunner of INSIGHT'S sister daily, the Washington Times.

Armentrude derives from a mythical proper name, William Q. Armentrude, who is an imaginary Washington character "who fought red tape in the bureaucracy by boring from within with mischievously dumb regulations."

Thus, according to a Star editorial of Dec. 4, 1976: "It was Armentrude, in a brief stint at the Department of Agriculture, who advised egg farmers in Rule 88: `Do not attempt to fry eggs in their shells.'"

When Armentrude was "discovered and sent packing, he alighted briefly at the Department of Commerce, but only long enough to write the inspired Rule 104 of the Office of Washing Machines and Dryer Administration: `It is not necessary to remove buttons to wash a shirt.'" Impressive as this is, "His greatest work may have been for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where his set of rules for the use of stepladders contained the classic injunction, `When ascending or descending, the user should face the ladder.'"

As Dickson concludes: "The Star is gone, but Armentrudism goes on." Indeed, and the word "armentrude" should be immortal!

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