[i]One if by feck, two if by flunky.
Dear Word Detective: If “feckless” is without “feck,” what is “feck”? – Randy Sublette.
Ah, better to ask, “What isn’t feck?” Without “feck” there would be nothing. “Feck” makes the world go 'round. Movers and shakers have scads of “feck.” Donald Trump has “feck” by the blow-dried bushel, and Bill Gates has so much “feck” he uses it for mulch in his money garden. Legend has it, in fact, that certain suites at the Plaza Hotel in New York City have hot and cold running “feck” on tap.
And without at least a little “feck,” this column would not exist, so I’d best muster the bit I have and get on with it. “Feck” is vigor, energy, initiative, efficiency, and, most importantly, effectiveness, the power to get things done. That may seem a lot to invest in an odd little word like “feck,” but perhaps it will make more sense when I tell you that “feck” is simply an aphetic, or cropped, form of our familiar English word “effect.”
“Feck” comes to us from Scots, the language of Scotland, and never really made it into standard English, although its derivative, “feckless,” appeared in English in the 16th century. As you might imagine, “feckless” means “ineffective, feeble, weak or helpless,” and is not a good thing to be. The opposite of “feckless” is “feckful,” meaning “efficient, vigorous and powerful,” which, ironically, has not been a very feckful word itself and has never gained wide acceptance in English.
Although “feckless” is at root a fairly contemptuous term, modern usage has lightened up a bit, and “feckless” is now often used to mean “carefree, irresponsible, unconcerned,” especially applied to blissfully ignorant youth (as in Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “Memory,” which begins “When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt”). “Fecklessness” in this sense is a temporary condition, sadly cured by exposure to the cruelties of life.
But while “fecklessness” can be cured by time, “gormlessness” is forever. “Gorm” is another fine old word (originally “gaum”) meaning “care or attention,” so someone who is “gormless” lacks attention, doesn’t notice things, is tuned out, vegged out, hopeless and clueless.
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There y go young Philip, Have I ever let y down? 
Never mind.
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