I read an interesting article this morning about words which linguists call ‘orphaned negatives’, words like kempt, ruly, ept and gruntled. These are real words which are no longer used though their opposites unkempt, unruly, inept and disgruntled are still popular. We can add to these ruth, feck and gorm, and wouldn’t it be great if we could trot these words out at the appropriate time in our conversation?
I remember my mum would use the word ‘ruthy’ meaning someone who was compassionate so there is hope for the words yet.
Discombobulate is a wonderful word too, and we never hear ‘combobulate’ but the article mentions that Mitchell airport in Milwaukee has a ‘recombobulation area’ where passengers can release some of the tensions of air travel.
Of course, the English language is adopting new words all the time, many acquired from other languages. Churchill used the term ‘black dog’ to mean depression, the new OED has curmudgeonly, mumpish, crumpsy, nettlish, porcupinal and spleenical, all meaning irritable. I might be described as a ‘cacafuego’ (a person who passes comment on subjects they know nothing about).
Did you know that cacklefarts are eggs and that snottingers are handkerchiefs?
But my favourite is a word from the Philippines: ‘gigil’,
the irresistible desire to squeeze something cute. Now how can I drop that into conversation?
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