Quillemency

quillemency (kwil-LEM-en-see), noun. The small mercy by which a pen you have just proven to be dead is returned to the pot rather than the bin. You reach for a pen, press it to the paper and get nothing. You try again, harder. Still nothing. The wastepaper basket is right there, within easy reach, gaping helpfully. And yet, with a sigh, you put the pen back in the mug with all the others, as though it might recover if given a little quiet time.

The word joins quill, a pen of the older, feathered sort, with clemency, the mercy a judge shows to someone who does not entirely deserve it. The pen has had its trial. It has failed it, completely and in front of witnesses. It goes back in the pot anyway. Quillemency is, in other words, a very gentle kind of justice, and like most gentle justice it tends to cause problems later on.

The test is always the same. A short scribble in the margin of something important, then a harder one, then a small furious circle, the handwriting of someone who has stopped believing. Nothing. The pen goes back among the working pens, nib down, to be tested again in about a fortnight by the same person, who will remember nothing whatsoever about the first trial and will be equally surprised when it fails again.

Usage: “There are nine pens in that mug and I have shown quillemency to seven of them.” The plural is quillemencies, which is difficult to say and extremely easy to do. Related forms include chargerhope, the belief that the loose cable in the kitchen drawer fits something you still own, and batteryfaith, the conviction that the batteries in the junk drawer are full because nobody has ever proved otherwise.

Behind the joke is a very human reluctance to throw things away. Many people find it surprisingly hard to get rid of small objects, even useless ones, especially if they might possibly work again or still have some sort of purpose. Throwing something away feels like making a final decision, and putting it back in the pot lets you avoid making one today. The mug fills up, the odds get worse, and somewhere in there, surely, is a pen that works.

So the next time you test a pen and it fails, you have two choices. You can show quillemency, return it to the pot and meet it again in two weeks, or you can deliver the verdict and drop it in the basket. The second choice is kinder in the long run, both to you and to the next person who needs to write down a phone number in a hurry. Keep the pens that work. Let the others rest.