The issue still isn’t settled. It might never be. Hopefully, this column will enlighten some people and bring a few to my way of thinking. Notice I said “hopefully.”

For years, language purists recoiled in horror over the misuse of words and phrases that the Miss Grundys of our youth would implore us to avoid.

Let me explain:

William Safire, a former columnist for the New York Times, shook up the language generation a few years back when he sided with the use of “hopefully” in places where, to the rest of us, it doesn’t belong.

For example, most language mavens cringe at the insertion of “hopefully” when the writer or speaker means “I hope.”

Here’s a correct use of the word: “The boss said my pay envelope would be a little bulkier this week. I opened it hopefully but discovered the bulk was caused by the boss’ having included an 8×10 glossy photo of himself.”

David R. Williams, a writer of grammar and usage books, says, “‘Hopefully’ exists in that gray area between the snobs and the slobs. According to the grammar purists, ‘hopefully’ is an adverb defining an action to be used only when an action is done with hope or in a hopeful manner.”

True, “hopefully” used to mean, “filled with hope.” Now, people also use it to mean “I hope”; the very staid clause, “It is to be hoped,” used only by librarians; and “One would hope.”

My friend John Detterick forwarded me a New York Times column by Clyde Haberman. It’s titled, “Is This the End of Proper Grammar? Hopefully Not.” That kind of headline ironically points exactly to the issue of the use of “hopefully.”

Haberman refers to the Associated Press Style Book, which he calls the bible of usage for “multitudes of writers, editors and other species of word nerds.” The AP’s change in policy? “From now on, the A.P. Stylebook … will recognize the legitimacy of the adverb ‘hopefully’ as it is heard in everyday language, even if it makes a grammar stickler’s back teeth ache,” Haberman writes.

In my own journalism classes I used to condone, though not encourage, the misuse of the word, but for different reasons. You see, some of the ancient green-eye-shade editors who eschewed “hopefully” simply weren’t of my generation.

“Those old men need to come around and realize that language changes,” Haberman writes, “and if people start using ‘hopefully’ when they mean ‘it is hoped,’ let them.”

But now, especially in light of my birthday last Saturday, I have a faint suspicion that I’ve become one of those old fogies. Accordingly, “hopefully” now rankles and that rankling took effect when I was still 72. Hopefully now that I’m 73, the word will begin to mean less to me in the future.

Many of us believed the misuse of “hopefully” arose from the rule-breaking do-your-own-thing spirit of the ‘60s and ‘70s. I suspect, however, the phenomenon has been around much longer; it’s simply our awareness of the usage that got our attention.

Fred Shapiro, a Yale University professor of law, has located dozens of citations of “hopefully” in periodicals dating back more than 90 years. He even found such usage in an 1851 source.

Times can change. Can I? Hopefully.

• • •

Related to the idea of adverbs modifying verbs, there’s also the use of “badly” in expressions like “I feel badly that my pay envelope is skinny.”

“Badly” might suffice in a sentence like “The Dallas Cowboys performed badly,” but when it comes to linking verbs that refer to the senses — feeling, looking, smelling, tasting, etc. — we simply feel bad, or things taste or smell bad, or people look bad. But never badly, even though the verb in the sentence makes us want to turn “bad” into “badly.”

When people say, “I feel badly,” we language cops immediately assume the speaker somehow has singed his or her fingers and the finger-feelers are in poor shape.

• • •

“Why do you keep driving around the block?” my wife asked after the fourth time we circled our neighborhood at Camp Luna.

That was last Saturday, the spring’s first totally pleasant day. “Is it obvious?” I asked. “This is only the first time around this block,” I said.

“No, it’s four times,” she insisted.

“Well,” I told Bonnie, “I thought I saw something no man has ever seen before?”

“What? A legal hit by the New Orleans Saints? ”

“No, what I’ve never seen and what I still don’t believe I’ve seen, is a woman cooking burgers on a grill.”

So that was the reason for circling the block: Where and when there’s barbecue, there’s a man doing the honors, not a woman. Why is this so? My absolute conviction is that it’s a way of showing we still have mastery over nature; it’s hard-wired into men’s (not women’s) DNA.

Remember back in caveman days when the women stayed home and had babies while men brought home the brontosaur brisket (or whatever else was in fashion)? The pre-historic barbecue grill was a sure way to prove man’s mastery over the elements and much more. And that’s why men do the barbecuing — they don’t cook otherwise — and some put on an apron, even if it makes them look sissified.

Lest my brilliant idea rankle 1) women, 2) men, 3) anthropologists, 4) vegans, 5) cavemen, I welcome feedback on my totally conjectural, totally non-scientific opinion on why men grill.

Hopefully, a reader or two will respond.