It's the word of the day for September 29th.

Today's word is feckless, spelled e c k l e s f e s f e s feckless is an adjective it describes people or things that are

weak or ineffective here's the word used in a sentence from the New Yorker by Henry Alford.

The players streamed down Columbus Avenue, serenating passers-by with the Til axes theme song, a pedestrian stopped and stared.

When the axes crossed 66th Street, traffic momentarily isolated one bass player from the rest of the band like a feckless baby elephant stranded on the veldt.

A feckless person is lacking in feck, and what you may ask is Feck? In Scots, our source of the word feckless,

Feck means majority or effect. The term is ultimately an alteration of the middle English word effect.

So something without feck is something without effect or ineffective.

In the past, feckful, meaning efficient or effective, sturdy, or powerful, made an occasional

appearance, but in this case the weak has outlived the strong.

Feckless is a commonly used English word, but Feckful has proven, well, feckless.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit Marion Webster.com today for definitions, word play and trending word lookups.