When I saw “ram-shackled” used to describe a boat. the image of a boat chained to a ram sprang immediately to mind.

Both ramshackle and ramshackled are used to describe a building or other fairly large object in a state of extreme disrepair.

The word started out as ransackled and is related to such words as ransom and sack (as in “to pillage.”)

I’ve also seen ramshackle/ramshackled written as two words:

Ram-shackled economies –headline at the New Statesman

Factories in China range from some of the most modern in the world to small ram shackled facilities. –story at the Huffington Post

Both ramshackle and ramshackled should be written as one word.

Unless, of course, you are making a pun, as the writer of this Washington Post headline was doing:

Ram-Shackled
The Redskins’ Defense Is Shredded For 579 Yards in an Overtime Loss

The opposing team was the St. Louis Rams.

Yes, it’s in the Urban Dictionary, but then, what isn’t?

I’ve begun noticing the spelling “urk” where standard English calls for irk.

Headline on the Keene-Valley (NY) Forum: what urks me most

Blog title: Stuff That Urks Me

Twitter Tweet: One thing that URKS ME THE MOST is people who cross the street when it clearly says DONT WALK!

irk: to irritate or disgust (as a person) usually by reason of tiresome or wearying qualities -Merriam-Webster

The etymology of irk is uncertain. It may be related to O.N. yrkju “work.” The modern use of the verb irk with the meaning “annoy” dates from the late 15th century. The adjective irksome, “bothersome,” dates from the 1510s. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

English orthography makes use of five different letter combinations to spell the /er/ sound:
er
her, after, determine
ir
sir, stir, girdle, bird
ur
urn, turn, burn, spurn, pursue, murder, burr, cur
(w)or
work, word, world, worm, worship
ear
early, earth, earl, earn, learn, heard, pearl, search, yearn

Yes, it does seem excessively irksome to have five ways to spell one sound, but that’s the way it is.

The best way to deal with it is to pay attention to words that contain the /er/ sound the first time you have occasion to write them. Romalda Spalding’s mnemonic is an effective way to remember the five spellings:

Her first nurse works early.

In this sentence the spellings occur in the order of their frequency. Most of the time the /er/ sound is spelled er. The “er” of early, on the other hand, represents the /er/ sound in only a few English words.

A reader expresses dismay at lapses in the spelling of the past form of the verb pay:
 

An article in the Burlington (VT) Free Press today had this heading:  Isle La Motte to vote on spending repayed funds.

[W]hen did repayed become an acceptable word? 

The answer, of course, is that it hasn’t.

Note: a Free Press reader pointed out the misspelling on the paper’s site:

“repayed” ?? Who buyed your English classes?

and the misspelled word was promptly corrected.

Our DWT reader offers another, more unfortunate example:

My friend’s son received a report card from his teacher that read:  Tate payed attention in class. 

Language changes and irregular verbs morph into regular verbs with -ed endings, but some words are in such frequent use that the older forms endure. It’s difficult to understand how someone educated as a teacher or a journalist could fail to master such a basic irregular spelling as paid.

The OED does include the spelling “payed” as a form used “chiefly in the nautical sense”:

pay: v. To smear or cover (a wooden surface or join, esp. the seams of a ship) with pitch, tar, or other substance, so as to make watertight or resistant to damage. Also (occas.) with over.

Merriam-Webster lists “payed” as a past form used for another nautical expression:

pay: to slacken (as a rope) and allow to run out

For the everyday sense of pay as remuneration, the past tense is paid.

Two other common verbs ending in -ay that also change the y to i in the past are say and lay:

say/said/have said
lay/laid/have laid

Libby Lewis writes:

Today I wanted to comment to someone that a flyer they had designed contained too many words. I stopped short mid-sentence wondering if the right word to use was “verbage” or “verbiage”. Dictionary.com surprised me by defining “verbage” as

“A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that assimilates it to the word ‘garbage’…More pejorative than ‘verbiage’”  

So I looked up “verbiage”and found “overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity”

I thought “verbiage” simply referred to the use of words, but I see I was wrong. All this led me to a new question and to you for the answer:  Is it redundant to say that something contains “too much verbiage”?

Lots of questions here.

verbiage
This is one of those “missing i words” I’ve written about in the past: verbiage, foliage, miniature. Not everyone pronounces the “i” in these words, with the result that they are often misspelled as “verbage,” “folage,” and “minature.”

The OED gives two definitions for verbiage:

1. Wording of a superabundant or superfluous character, abundance of words without necessity or without much meaning; excessive wordiness.
2. Diction, wording, verbal expression.

The first definition is the more common, but the second is still frequent.

Is “too much verbiage” redundant?
If the first OED definition is meant, then yes, “too much verbiage” would be redundant. It would be enough to say, This flyer suffers from verbiage. Another way would be to say that the text is “long-winded” or “too wordy.”

Nevertheless, we often hear and read such expressions as “too much verbiage,” “excess verbiage,” and “excessive verbiage.” Perhaps the writers of these expressions have the second definition in mind.

verbage
The OED has an entry for “verbage” as a “rare alternate spelling of verbiage.”

Merriam-Webster offers variant pronunciations of verbiage, but does not mention “verbage” as an alternate spelling or as another word.

The Dictionary.com definition that describes “verbage” as an assimilation of verbiage with garbage is not worth the consideration of writers whose goal is to write a form of standard English. We already have a wealth of words that can convey the worthlessness of words, one of which is garbage.

Case of the Missing “i”s
How to Describe Gibberish

We’ve all heard people criticize parents who permit their children to run amok in public places. Or do those badly brought up children run amuck?

The first recorded use of the phrase to run amok in English dates from the 1670s. The word amok is from Malay amuk, “attacking furiously.” The expression as we use it now usually means “to run about in a wild manner,” As a noun, amok can mean “a murderous frenzy.”

Before the phrase came into use, the word was used in its Portugeuse form amouco or amuco to mean “a frenzied Malay.”

The OED points out two uses by Dryden and Byron in which the word was used erroneously (without the prefix a-):

And runs an Indian muck at all he meets. –Dryden
Thy waiters running mucks at every bell. –Byron

A web search shows plenty of examples of both amok and amuck. There’s a blog with the title “Running Amuck,” and a 5K race called the “RunAmuck Mud Run.”

Here are some other examples:

People who permit their children to run amuck in places of business should be locked in a cage with an angry gorilla.

HOAs are a good idea run amok

As a caregiver, plaintiff has allowed the children to run amok in neighborhoods where they lived.

So which is the “correct” spelling?

Writing in the first half of the last century, H. W. Fowler preferred amuck. He classed the spelling amok, along with sati and Khalif for the more familiar spellings suttee and Caliph, as a “didacticism.”

Dictionary devotees whose devotion extends to the etymologies think it bad for the rest of us to be connecting amuck with muck, & come to our rescue with amok.

On the eve of the year 2010, however, the spelling amok seems to have won. A web search gives amuck 694,000 hits; amok garners 4,350,000.