James Stewart has a wonderful dispatch in yesterday’s Times in respect of Fedspeak. He devotes something like 2,000 words to trying to decipher what the Federal Reserve might mean when it said that in beginning to normalize monetary policy it would be “patient.” Notes Mr. Stewart: “Billions of dollars in profits and losses will be riding on the outcome, yet the central bank’s chairwoman, Janet Yellen “has had to explain at length just what ‘patient’ means.”

Mr. Stewart’s cable is a classic on the topic of what The New York Sun, in one of its most remarked upon editorials, calls the “verbal dollar.” This is a dollar that has no link to such specie as was favored by, say, George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy, to touch upon a few of the presidents who wanted the dollar backed with gold or silver — or both.

The Timesman (like millions of us) is driven fairly to distraction by a dollar that is backed with nothing but words. He notes that on December 17, when a Fed statement used the word “patient,” Mrs. Yellen appeared at a news conference. There, Mr. Stewart notes, she “said the statement meant something quite specific: that the Fed would not raise interest rates for at least a ‘couple’ of meetings in 2015, adding, ‘I believe the dictionary says a couple means two.’”

Actually, Mrs. Yellen missed a beat there. “Two” is only one of the definitions of “couple.” Merriam-Webster says the word also means “an indefinite small number,” which may explain the astonishing events that followed. After her reference to “two,” Mr. Stewart notes, “Immediately, stocks soared and interest rates plunged as investors concluded that any rate rise was further off than previously expected.” Imagine, all that on an error in the definition of “couple.”

Then, Mr. Stewart continues, Mrs. Yellen, testifying late in February before Congress, “said the word ‘patient’ would at some point be dropped, and the Fed would consider raising rates on a ‘meeting by meeting’ basis.” That, Mr. Stewart writes, “seemed to puzzle investors, who showed no immediate reaction” until last week, when the “strong jobs report” came out and investors “concluded that ‘patient’ may be dropped sooner rather than later.”

At this point in his story, Mr. Stewart is just getting into second gear. He interviews a couple of (as in several) professors (it’s the Times, after all). Then remarks that all this works to the advantage of the policy-makers. He notes that in 2004, Mrs. Yellen’s predecessor, Ben Bernanke, “proclaimed the end of ‘Fedspeak.’” Yet, Mr. Stewart writes at one point, “This isn’t how the new transparent Fed was supposed to work.” Let us just say that we agree.