Quillemency

Quillemency (n.) From quill, a pen of the older sort, and clemency, the mercy a judge extends to someone who does not entirely deserve it. The pen has had its trial. It has failed it. It goes back in the pot.

The test is always the same. A short scribble in the corner of something, then a harder one, then a small furious circle: the handwriting of somebody who has stopped believing. Nothing. And the bin is right there, within reach, and the pen does not go into it. It goes back among the working pens, nib down, to be tested again in about a fortnight by the same person, who will remember nothing of the first trial.

In use: There are nine pens in that pot and I have shown quillemency to seven of them. The plural is quillemencies, which is difficult to say and extremely easy to do.

Nobody has ever explained the impulse convincingly. The leading theory is that throwing a pen away requires delivering a verdict, and quillemency is what happens when you would simply rather not deliver one. The pot fills. The odds worsen. Somewhere in there, statistically, is a pen that works, and every so often it surfaces, and the whole system justifies itself for another year.