It ’s plausibly crossed your nous at some point when you hear a word like , say , " disgruntled . " You might ask yourself , " Has anyone ever been assuage ? Is it even potential to be mollify ? "
Words like this , that are only used in the negative and never the positive , are sometimes conversationally address " lone negatives " or " unmated give-and-take . " They ’re common Word of God , like " unceasing , " " disheveled , " " ineffable " and " unraveled . " There are plenty of them in mod English . But are they really lone because they ’ve lost a positive mate ? Or are they merely sole words , doing an passable job on their own without necessitate an opposite to shore up them up ? First , let ’s face at what pee-pee these watchword negative before we bump out if they ’re solitary .
Word Creation and Recreation
Many words in English are " multimorphemic , " say Dr. Jenny Lederer , an associate prof of linguistics at San Francisco State University . " Multi " mean " many , " and " morpheme " intend " a lingual whole . " Multimorphemic words can be create by simply adding an – " s " to a countersign to make it plural ( so , " cat " becomes " cats . " ) Or they can be create by supply a damaging prefix morpheme , such as " un- , " to a morpheme such as " glad " to get its opposite : " distressed . "
We form raw words this way all the time , harmonize to Lederer . " A derivational prefix vary the meaning of the root Holy Writ , " she read . Say you search for something on the net and you want to expect up the same thing again . It ’s light enough in English to add the prefix " re- , " which mean " again , " to the verb " Google , " which is itself a newish Son . It ’s very possible to say you ’re get going to " re - Google " something , and the mortal you ’re talking to would interpret even if they ’d never heard the word before .
" We ’re in a hyper - accelerated period of Logos founding , " Lederer says . " Even our spelling is alter . " She notes that other terminology have even more derivational morphologies ( a very fun phrase to say ) than English , with more slipway to exchange the meanings of words by tot up multiple prefixes and postfix to the root Christian Bible .
Where the Words Come From
Now that we screw how these negative words are formed , we can await at how we get them . Many of these solitary negatives came to English through French via Latin .
Take a Word of God like " ineffable , " which draw something " too great for give-and-take , " consort to the Oxford English Dictionary . It was instantly borrow into English from French in the Middle Ages . It was the exact same Scripture , no changes in spelling , though it was pronounced with a French flair . France take on it from Latin , ineffabilis , which mean " unutterable . "
The first known use of this watchword was in 1450 : " Oh godde of hiegh pitee inmense and ineffable . " ( " Oh God of gamy pity , immense and unutterable . " ) It go far in English complete with the prefix and the full meaning . Lederer says that words like this come into the language " already glued into place , and there ’s no incentive to take off the damaging prefix . " It filled a kettle of fish in the English language as it was , and we did n’t need " effable " as its contrary .
Not that mass did n’t stress . The first known exercise of " effable " was in 1668 , so more than 200 twelvemonth after " ineffable " was in use . In the United States , " ineffable " had a bit of a heyday in the 1870s , but " effable " was only used in two different publications around 1980 .
" The positive could have dropped out because there were much more frequent equivalent word in use , " Lederer say . In other words , we have plenty of ways to describe something that is describable . What we did n’t have was a give-and-take for something too bountiful for words , and the French had a intelligence ready for the adoption .
‘Disheveled’: Is There a ‘Heveled’?
Not only do we make up new words thanks to morphemes , but we also change the meanings of words over clip . This is called " semanticdrift , " and it has led to some of these lonely negative not have positives .
" The disconfirming or positive might have drifted out from its original usage , " Lederer says . " The negative could have drifted in a particular context of use and so it ’s no longer now oppositional to the confident . "
This is the caseful for a discussion like " tousled , " which means " being in loose disorder or disarray,“according to Merriam - Webster . It too comes to English from French , where the damaging prefix " dis- " was sum tochevoil , which meant " hair . " For a farsighted time , it did refer just to the province of one ’s hair or hat . In 1405,Geoffrey Chaucerwrote , " Dischevelee , carry through his cappe , he rood al bare . " ( " With whisker unbound , write for his cap , he ride all bare - headed . " )
Having unbound hairsbreadth and only a cap rather than a proper chapeau was very passing in Chaucer ’s day , the equivalent of wearing your jammies on an plane . In the 600 long time since he write " The Canterbury Tales , " the password has drifted away from its original English import to refer to a person ’s whole state , not just their fountainhead . Messy dress , makeup , hair – any of it adds up to being tangle today . There ’s no " cheveled " or " heveled " because that would only mean having hair’s-breadth . English did n’t need that word like it seemingly want " disheveled . "
" So many new object and activeness come into our spirit as culture evolves , we have to have new words " Lederer says . " They are often base on honest-to-goodness watchword using compound , blend or derivations . Without them , we ’d be utter like Shakespeare . "
So, What About ‘Disgruntled’?
Let ’s bring this back around to our earlier question : Is it potential to be assuage ? The answer is not really .
" Disgruntle " was first used in 1682 . " Gruntle " come from Middle English — " grunt " with the ending " le , " which play as a diminutive . Put it together , and you get basically " small grunt phone . " And that ’s what gruntle mean when it was first used as early as 1400 , commonly when write about pigs or people sounding like pig .
It was n’t until 1591 that " gruntle " was used to have in mind " quetch . " So , originally , " gruntle " was not a positivistic parole — or a negative one . In 1682 , " disgruntled " pops up for the first time signify " ill - humored " or " tired of . " And it did n’t really take off in popularity untilthe 21st century .
And in the end , the question that started it all : Are these words really lonely negatives ? Nope . " It ’s not a technical terminal figure , " Lederer says . " There may not be a term for these words . "
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