Nor’easter vs. Northeaster

Sad to say, the next time a blinding snowstorm comes roaring in from the Canadian Maritimes – today, perhaps, tomorrow? – almost everyone will call it a “nor’easter” – weathermen and women in their parkas, ordinary folks, and even newspaper headline writers.

The pronunciation is the subject of raging controversy, if this sort of controversy can be said to rage. Purists including Samuel Eliot Morison, the great Harvard historian, and Gerald Warner Brace, a Deer Isle rusticator and author, denounced “nor’easter” a half-century ago as an abomination. But pragmatists including the U.S. government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration go along with what has become common usage and generally view “nor’easter” as acceptable.

Surviving diehards include Tom Halsted, a newspaper columnist, experienced sailor and something of a marine historian based in Gloucester, Mass. He is considering a new blast in defense of tradition. In a 2003 column, he denounced those who go with the flow. He wrote: “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.”

Mr. Halsted said that all you have to do is “stand on a dock or a deck anywhere between New Bedford and Nova Scotia and listen to a few working seamen” and you’ll hear the difference. “It’s ‘nor’west’ and ‘sou’west,’ ‘no’theast’ and ‘s’utheast’ – but never ‘nor’east’ (or, god forbid), ‘sou’east.'”

He explained that the custom of sounding the “th” when the wind direction is easterly and omitting it when the it blows from the west arose in the days of sail. Captains and helmsmen needed to shout and repeat commands in howling weather and make sure they were 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. But ‘Nor’west’ and ‘Nawtheast’ would sound distinctly different.”

So, the next time the wind howls in from the Northeast, pause a moment before you call it a “nor’easter.” Do you want to stick with the fine old maritime traditions of Down East Maine? Or will you give in to sloppy modern usage, which often accepts ungrammatical formulations such as “It’s me” and “between he and I”? If you choose the latter, your argument can be that it’s a living language, for better or worse.