What they ain’t got, the singers sang, is dames. How their grammar teachers might like the thought phrased–if they considered it suitable for phrasing at all–is another matter.Perhaps “We intensely regret that the exigencies and regulations having to do with our wartime service in the American armed forces now deployed in the South Pacific (or Rodgers and Hammerstein and Michener) theatre of operations deprive us of the stimulating company of friendly and attractive ladies” might pass. Or, in the case of outposts, “All alone on a submerged volcano cone.”
But the grammatic occasion passes, too. The song and the singers cannot remain forever new hat. There is always room, though, for one more example of a collision between terminological exactitude and lexicographic elegance in the ghostly, illimitable attics where our eternally changing idioms are stored, along with the astonishing variety of rules concerning what is unsavorily known as English usage.
