It's a funny language

[watervole]

I'm playing around with Scrabble words again and it's brought to mind something that I've often found interesting.

There are a lot of words that now only exist in their negative or reverse form.

You can have 'reconcile', but not 'concile'.

You may be disconcerted, but how often are you concerted?  (The latter still exists, but is a lot rarer than the first.)

Discombobulated is English, but what odds on combobulated?  (LJ's spellchecker allows the first, but not the second)

I'm assuming that all words of this nature were once in current usage, but that the positive form has fallen out of use while the negative one remained.

What words of this nature can you think of?

Comments

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

ert

[megamole.livejournal.com]

ept, though the Sinister Greenend Organisation in Cambridge is fond of this back formation.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

What's the longer version? I'm failing to spot it?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Ah, inert. Yes, that really is an odd one.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Many of these have never existed in English without a prefix, only in Latin. I assume there's a Latin word at the root of "inert" and "exert", but I doubt it ever got near the English, just its compounds.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Refute.
Resume.

[yalovetz]

Gormless.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

If you go to IKEA, you can get a GORM.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Uncouth.

Dishevelled.

[emmzzi.livejournal.com]

Is 'couthy' an opposite of uncouth?

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Oh, you make a concerted effort. So I think it's a lot commoner than you think. I played something the other week in scrabble that I took a chance on the being a positive form of negative word. Can't remember what it is though.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

True, but concerted in this usage is not an exact opposite to the way we use disconcerted. The meaning has shifted. One can see the connection, but it is no longer exact.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Found in Tennyson's wastepaper basket:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
All of the men were mayed,
Although the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.

[sugoll.livejournal.com]

Personally, I have quite of a lot of ruth.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

The opposite of ruthless is rueful, isn't it?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

They are certainly related, but 'ruth' does actually exist as a word.

I'd never thought about the association with rueful before, but there is certainly a common derivation there.

[steverogerson.livejournal.com]

There are also the odd ones where the negative and positive now mean the same, though presumably they didn't once. Flammable and inflammable is the obvious example.

[dumain.com (from livejournal.com)]

Actually flammable is a recent formation. The "in-" in inflammable does not mean not and never has. To quote Strunk & White:
Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some less educated people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Gruntled.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Sieg Meow!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I was on the point of quoting Wodehouse in The Code of the Woosters, so I'll do it anyway:

"If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

[aeglefinus.livejournal.com]

That 1938 usage is the first given for gruntled in the OED, whereas disgruntled dates from 1682, altough gruntle as a verb and a noun pre-dates that. The OED quotes from Arthur Dent (1601) "He cannot indure that we should gruntle against him with stubborne sullennesse."

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Trust you to find the Arthur Dent reference!

BTW, yes, you can bring the dog to Silvercon. Just take care he doesn't go in the back garden as he might charge into the pond (the edge isn't terribly visible).

[sugoll.livejournal.com]

And Dirk Gently talks about facing the ineffable and finding out "we can, in fact, eff it after all."

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Since gruntled and the Wooster quote have been mentioned, how about kempt?

There's a World Wide Words article here about unpaired words.

[kevinrtaylor.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that all words of this nature were once in current usage

A dangerous assumption!

Combobulated never was English - see:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-dis1.htm
Discombobulated is an invented word from the 1830's.

Neither was concile - see:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reconcile
Conciliare never made it from Latin via Old French into English,
although reconciliare did.

Inert comes from Latin, from "in" (not) "ars" (skill) with a vowel modification and normal declination (ars, artis, arte). The positive form does exist, as "art" or "arty".

Some words that might seem negative actually aren't, such as "inflammable", meaning "capable of being inflamed". "Flammable" was derived by dropping the "in". The opposite is "uninflammable".
And "inundate" from Latin "in" (in) + "undare" (surge). It's less common opposite is "exundate", to surge out.

[lucas-t-bear.livejournal.com]

Continent?

(please don't ask why that has suddenly come to mind)