a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger
Not Positive About This One
I've decided to use this entry of LOGOLOG to start keeping track of common words which have a negative form but for which their apparent positive conjugates are not well known or even extant. For example, NONCHALANT is a common enough word. It would appear that it is the negative of CHALANT, but the latter is not a word.Strange, huh?
Here is my list so far:
DISGRUNTLED DISHEVEL INEPT INERT NONCHALANT UNCOUTH UNKEMPT
Feel free to alert me to more in the comments section below.
By the way, this is hardly a new topic concerning the English language. If memory serves me correctly, I believe that someone wrote an article (for the New Yorker?) in which he or she used as many of these non-existent words as possible. The result sounded oddly acceptable because so many of the words seemed right, but in fact, the prose bordered on nonsense.
-- Eric
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Comments about this article:
How about AMORPHOUS?Posted by: Eric [not Harshbarger, different 'Eric'!]
not sure about Morphous, but I think that Morph (to morph actually) exists...but that's just me.
Posted by: Claude
couth is a fairly common word.
Posted by: Greg
I suppose COUTH is occasionally used (though I never have); however it is a back-formation from UNCOUTH, so I'll keep it on my list [grin].
Posted by: Eric Harshbarger
Another one: INDEFATIGABLE
Also, the positive forms of these are relatively uncommon:
INCORRIGIBLE
INDELIBLE
INVINCIBLE
And, what about INDIFFERENT? It doesn't quite fit the category, but in some ways it is more interesting: DIFFERENT and INDIFFERENT are not opposites.
Posted by: Eric [same 'Eric' as above - different 'Eric' from Harshbarger]
By coincidence the current issue of Word Ways [http://www.wordways.com/] has a small piece about this very topic (p. 34). Some of the included examples are:
ILLICIT
INADVERTENT
INEFFABLE
INNOCUOUS
DISPARAGE
IMPERVIOUS
UNWIELDY
...
most of the positive forms CAN be found in unabridged dictionaries, but they are rarely actually used.
Posted by: Eric Harshbarger
Yes, it was in the New Yorker. Copies of it are all over the web. Here's one: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/how-i-met-my-wife.html
How about INSCRUTABLE, INDETERMINATE, UNPREPOSSESSING, EXPROPRIATE, and INVEIGH?
Posted by: Alan Morgan
INFLAMMABLE is actually the *same* as FLAMMABLE.
Posted by: Anonymous
Yes, I actually mention (IN)FLAMMABLE in this past entry:
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/cgi-bin/logolog.cgi?20060621
Posted by: Eric Harshbarger
Hm...I believe that this issue was vaguelly addressed in one episode of the Strong Bad emails at homestarrunner.com. He refers to someone as "uncouth" and then wonders aloud if anything is just plain couth...
Posted by: Jamie
What about DEBILITATING?
Posted by: Peter
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