One of my favorite lines (and there were many!) from the motion picture "Private Benjamin" was when fish-out-of-water Private Judy Benjamin, having joined the US Army for lack of anything better to do with her life, finds herself in basic training with the hilarious Hal Williams as Sgt. Ross, who tells his squad of trainees:
"Beware, there are mine fields out there. Most of them are inert. However, some are ert."
A deep, thorough knowledge of our mother tongue would seem not to be a requirement for army non-coms, but anyway, in coining a new word, Ross makes a valid point that the soldiers might well recall on the mine fields...some mines might not be inert, so be careful!
I bring all this up for no good reason, as always, except that to say "inert" has a cousin-word, that being "inept," and there is a back-formation that allows us to mean the opposite of ineptitude and call someone "ept." If you want to, that is. "Ept" is in the dictionary, defined as competent or skillful, and no less a wordsmith than the great E. B. White of The New Yorker once wrote:
“I am much obliged..to you for your warm, courteous, and ept treatment of a rather weak, skinny subject.”
E.B. White; Letters of E.B. White; Harper & Row; 1976.
Note: I came across this because I subscribe to the brilliant A.Word.A.Day site, and if you love words, I encourage you to join me there! It would be very ept of you!
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