No matter how many times you correct them, people keep calling our special storms “nor’easters.” Writers, speakers, ordinary folks, television and radio weatherpersons, and even (gasp!) newspaper reporters and headline writers think it sounds smart and nautical to use that unfortunate word.
The problem is, as any knowledgeable seaman will tell you, there is no such term. The proper word is “northeaster” or, coloquially in Maine, “no’theaster.”
The latest jab at this contagious verbal boil that needs periodic lancing arrives from David D. Platt in the current Working Waterfront newspaper. Mr. Platt raises the question of whether the distinction between “nor’east” and “no’theast” is as important as it was in the days when sailing vessels were steered by compass points, when mistaking “nor’east” for “nor’west” might have confused the helmsman and could have been a matter of life or death. Vessels nowadays are steered by compass degrees or often by autopilot or a global positioning system.
The distinction, he reasons, has lost its importance if we are concerned simply with safety at sea. But he goes on: “When I hear ‘nor’east’ or read about a ‘nor’easter,’ I’m conditioned to suspect that the speaker or writer doesn’t know what he or she’s talking about.” It makes him question the qualifications of a forecaster who talks that way.
Another critic is Thomas Halsted, a Gloucester, Mass. sailor and newspaper columnist. His explanation in 2001: “The distinctive pronunciation arose in the days of sail, when helmsmen needed to pass on commands in howling weather and wanted to be sure to be clearly understood, ‘Nor’west’ and ‘nor’east’ might sound the same when shouted along the iced-up deck of a New Bedford scalloper or a Gloucester longliner beating home from Georges against a winter gale with a trip of fish. But ‘nor’west’ and ‘nawtheast’ would sound distinctly different.”
Mr. Halsted returned to the topic in a 2003 column: “That gimcrack word ‘nor’easter’ is a made-up, fake, pseudo-Yankee neologism that came from the same plastic cracker barrel as ‘Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.’ It should be shunned as silly and pretentious.”
Such objections have a long history. Samuel Eliot Morrison, the great Harvard historian, and author Gerald Warner Brace, both early-day Maine rusticaters, denounced “nor’easter” half a century ago as an abomination. But even the U.S. government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration sometimes caves in to this mistaken usage.
You can do your part in maintaining standards. Next time the wind howls from the northeast, think twice before you choose the word to describe it. Do you want to respect Maine’s long and honored seafaring tradition? Or do you want to slip into goofy faddish and ungramatical usage like “between he and I”?
The best choice is to just slap on your sou’wester and say it right.