As someone who sells and actually reads old, rare and antiquarian books, I can proudly say that these ‘lost positives’ are not lost with me. Long live antiquarian booksellers.
I think Susie is wrong about calling nocent and maculate "lost negatives." While they do denote ideas with negative connotations, grammatically they are still positives - they indicate the presence of something, rather than its absence
For sure. Maculte and nocent may indicate a positive evil, but are positive none the less. Immaculate and innocent have a negating prefix, hence negative words. Really the evaluative judgement about weather a word signifes something good or bad is distinct from its status linguistically as a negative or positive. To me it seems that the former is a prescriptive matter, and thereby outside the realm of linguistics as a sceince, while the latter is a descriptive fact about a word's structure.
it reminds me of positive and negative feedback loops, terms yoinked from engineering after the term feedback was stolen for commentary or back-and-forth if i drink, then think about my deepest regrets, then i drink more so i forget about them, that's a positive feedback loop! positive feedback is also called exacerbating feedback, self-reinforcing feedback, mass panic is a positive feedback loop where each individual will spark more panic if years later i am given a drink, i remember all of the throwing up, i can't even finish a glass, that's a negative feedback loop! self-regulating feedback that is it's not the worst crime but we should be careful when we muck up technical speech with figures of speech
@@RobWordsyour channel is wonderful! A video "rewboss" made is a review of your "10 german words English should steal". After watching his review, I decided to have a closer look at your content.
Back in grade school, I remember that we had innocent and nocent as spelling words for the week. Everyone was confused by nocent, including the parents and teachers.
A friend of mine is a professor of Composition and Rhetoric, we often had discussions about words like these. One of my favorites was "refurbished", and we discussed how we had never seen anything "furbished". Then I saw a truck at a local resort listing "furbishing" as a service.
Yeah, I've only heard it in specific context of "fully furbished", i.e. with furniture and ready to go, but even then most people would prefer "fully furnished" and I think assume the former to be a typo or not even realize a different word had been said. But it also means to be supplied, doesn't it?
The Wodehouse use of gruntled reminds me of the excellent Tim Curry line in Clue, after establishing he was the butler, a guest asked him what he did. "I butle, sir!"
“Well kempt” is a pretty common phrase. I’ve not heard kempt much, but I have heard it. Also I’ve personally used the word “couth” before. I really like it. I heard it get used a few times (by the same person) and picked it up. I haven’t used it much, but still.
In the US, both "well kempt" (think grooming) and "well kept" (think housekeeping) are pretty common phrases. E.g. "a well kept garden" or "a well kempt beard."
@@flatjesus That feels like it heavily overlaps with a pronunciation variance though. The meanings are indistinguishable, so I'd hazard a guess that it's rather up to chance whether or not most people actually mean to say "kept" vs "kempt".
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 i disagree, the meanings are distinguishable. Kempt refers to body hair. If someone is well kempt they are clearly well shevelled, as opposed to being dishevelled.
yup, well kempt is something ive heard often referring to stuff like hair, and couth is definitely not a word that isnt used - maybe less than kempt, but still not unused
A *slight* correction on the Flammable/Inflammable issue. There is a subtle distinction between the two in strictly literal sense. "Inflammable" is meant to mean "Able to be set on fire", while "Flammable" is meant to mean "Capable of bursting into flame" - the former implies that you would need some exterior sort of ignition to set the substance ablaze, while the latter will ignite of its own volition, given the right conditions (which may be narrow or broad, depending). Naturally, since the two meanings are very similar, and easy to confuse with one another, they have melded into a single common meaning over the years from common use.
My father was involved in a committee that considered this for the hazard plates you see on tanker lorries. The idea was to standardise them for international trade. The committee went with flammable because the "in" prefix was likely to cause confusion with non-English speakers, who risked thinking it means non-flammable; unfortunate if you were trying to extinguish a fire.
In the US, OSHA has mandated flammable be used to describe substances which can burst into flame because so many people thought inflammable meant not flammable. Combustible refers to ordinary material which will burn if set alight.
Fuel tankers regularly use Inflammable Liquid a bit of an Oxymoron since it is flammable and will self ignite under certain conditions being applied like static electricity.
I think the beauty of language is that regardless of whether a word is "real" you could say nearly all of these lost positives or false positives and most people can put together what you mean. That sort of intellectual elasticity must've been crucial before we allowed a bunch of self important nerds decided to police and taxonomize language.
I remember the moment this idea hit me. Early in my college days, a professor was talking about Latin being a dead language as opposed to English, which is constantly changing and evolving. I dropped many of my deeply-held beliefs and snootiness about "proper language" after that. Adaptation and alteration is good for a language, not a degradation of it.
In your eye, there's an oval spot called the Macula (part of the retina needed for colour vision). Macular Degeneration results in severe damage to it. Macula is the Latin word for spot. 👍 Speaking of spot, Cerberus, its possibly a corrupted version of a word for Spot/spotted. 😄 The guard dogo of the underworld is named Spot!
I was told once of an area in an airport, post Security, that was called (by an official sign) of the "Recombobulation Area." Clearly the place to go after being discombobulated by the TSA.
Space for ‘Recombobulation’ is wonderfully soothing, a comforting concept. Perhaps the idea of Recombobulation ought to be extended from an area to an era. The disconcerting crescendo of disorienting discombobulation that has been overwhelmingly preponderant during the first quarter of the 21st century cries out to be countered, to be followed by a calm era of Recombobulation.
What I think is cool about a lot of these is that the "positves" aren't really lost - they're just morphed a bit. Like unkempt/combed, or inept/aptitude. The traces of the lost positives still exist, but they don’t form a perfect pair anymore.
@@lukasg4807 I assume because of the German Influence in the US as well... kempt just sounds as the right participle in my ears.. German is gekämmt, except for the prefix ge- , that also gets dropped in some dialects, sounding exactly the same.
I've come across kempt so often that I had no idea that it was somehow fallen out of use. It might be that the fantasy and scifi books I've read, used it to sound different. And in online discussions, non native English speakers use it because it feels right :) Wieldy however, while it may not be a common word for most people, but anyone who works with hand tools or weapons will be familiar with it. Especially in the historical martial arts community, discussing the wieldiness of pointy and blunt whacking implements is a daily occurrence.
What's great about this is that you can just use these lost-positive words if you want. People can tell you "you're wrong, that's not a word" but if you start using it... it becomes a word that is in use. And the meaning is often quite obvious as just being the opposite of the more common negative.
Respectfully disagree. Of course it depends on circumstances (one would not use unconventional language in a professional publication, say) but language is both plastic, as you suggest, and elastic. Words continually morph and sometimes even pop into existence.
If enough people start using a word then yes. However it appears that the future of English will be texting acronyms, noises, and baby talk with the words “like” and “literally” used as nearly every other part of speech with minimal punctuation used. For example one today might hear a legal adult saying: “I was like eatin my chicky nuggys and Aiden yeeted em out my hand. I was all like screee, like big mad, and he was like LOL so Riley’s all like OMG you wanna throw hands. Then he like yeeted my chocky milk in his face. Pshd FML fam.” In its native written state it appears that all punctuation should be replaced with an emoji as both punctuation and conjunction in order to relay the emotions of the people involved. So although many of us would love to see our language evolve into a more precise and growing language with more words in common with other languages. It instead appears that English is devolving into a primitive and lazy language that we might consider a sign of illiteracy. As result I generally avoid speaking to people under 30 and am unable to understand unless I have my daughter present to translate. I imagine this it what it was like for Julius Caesar when he first encountered the Britons, naked cannibals painted blue communicating in strange and primitive guttural noises. The kind of people that would eventually sack the later apathetic and accepting Rome causing total collapse as they were absolutely incapable of understanding the machinery or three ingredients to concrete mixtures.
One of my favourite books (well the whole series really) growing up was Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons", where one of the characters, Nancy, has changed her name from Ruth because they're playing at pirates and their uncle told them that pirates are ruthless.
Kempt, usually qualified with well-kempt has been a familiar word for as long as I can remember. It can be applied to people but quite often to pet animals.
Couthie is a word still much used in Scotland - certainly in the NE, at any rate. It means something much closer to the original Old English as a couthie person is one who relates to us in a very pleasantly familiar way, someone we can feel instantly “at home” with.
My young daughter made the observation to my wife that the reason the toaster was not working was because it was plugged out. "Plugged in" and "unplugged" are what I would call an unbalanced pair. Cousins of "lost positives" I suppose. Apparently we needed to parentally correct our daughter but instead adopted her phraseology, lest we tell her to unplug the toaster only to have her take scissors to the end of the cord. Speaking of plugging, I always found it amusing that gangsters could plug a man with a revolver by filling him full of holes.
What if "deplug" was brought to the conversation? Seeing the idea of removing the plug eniterly, made me think I'd ask it in such a way- Might you deplug the toaster?
I would say that there is the issue that unplugged sounds like a stative passive, while something is plugged out is more of an active passive, that someone has plugged it out, now it is unplugged. another issue is, that English lost the distinction between un- and en(t)-/an(t)-, thus English speakers reuse the un- also for verbs, which is actually exclusively for adverbs and adjectives and nouns.
I knew a guy who came from Iran who was learning English. He accidentally knocked over my glass at a party and came to tell me. What he said was "I poured your drink out".
Growing up in the southern US (50 years ago) the word "couth" was used quite a bit, and meant - just as you described - mannerly, or traditionally acceptable. I was really surprised to hear you say it was obsolete and no longer used.
"Couth" is still used here on the west coast of Canada with the same meaning (well-mannered) but definitely is a word older folks use more than Gen X and Z.
I was going to say that it gets plenty of use in Dundee. Would Paw Broon himself not want a coothie wee dug tae fetch his pipe and slippers? @@Martinjlove
I also live in the southern US. I've definitely heard the word more than a couple times and was also rather surprised to hear it's considered obsolete.
I have heard "couth" used too, my family are from Yorkshire and I lived there as a child, so I'd say couth is still used there, along with other words and grammar considered to be generally obsolete. And, not for the first time, I have found parallels in use in the US South - my wife is from Virginia, and we now live in NC.
Back around 1960, when my husband joined the U. S. Air force and got sent to Okinawa, the first thing you had to do when you got there was go to "Couth School." There was so much difference between the American and Asian ways of life that the USAF needed to teach servicemen (no women back then) how not to commit some awful cultural howler that would offend everybody. So yes, in one place at least, it was (fairly) recently a thing. Thank you for another delightful video!
In Dutch, the word 'chalant' (written as galant) still exists and means something along the lines of being civil, respectful and well-behaved, often used in a context to describe someone that is in high esteem to the opposite sex (i.e. attractive).
Thank you so much, Rob. I'm an old man who has taught a little, written a little, spoken a lot and has loved the English language for decades. Over the years, I've thought about lost positives but never seriously nor systematically. You have given me, as a person with linguistic influence in my small circle, an idea. If positives can be lost, why can't they be found? Documented or not, I shall commence to use these positives, neither ironically nor sensationally, but as good and useful words found in the attic and given new life. Please keep up with fine work. You are an ept teacher, indeed.
Growing up, my family liked playing with these kinds of words and using some of these lost positives. We'd jokingly say things to each other like, "That's nothing to feel gruntled about," or "Oh, couthen up!"
As a German with a CPE, I am truly delighted by your channel that I have discovered recently. Keep up your enlightening and also humourous work! It does help in general to have a multilingual background ;-) which English-speaking people often lack, regrettably. From my German perspective, I am often surprised that Middle English bears far more resemblance to German than Modern English - a fact perfectly known to you, of course.
On the Whelm thing, the dictionary I have says “whelm” is water that washes across a boat’s deck. If it’s too much for the gunwale drains, you flounder, becoming overwhelmed and unable to cope. There’s lyrics like “battered by the whelm” in several poems, so I just accepted this; you couldn’t sensibly be “battered” (a repetitive action) by being capsized (a singular thing unless you somehow master the barrel roll)
@@Nerdsammich I’m not sure that proves or disproves that “whelm” is the water that gets over the gunwale. Those lyrics would make perfect sense based on both my and Rob’s dictionaries.
@@karinspangberg5990 That sounds like my “wash over and run off” version. Cool. Is that pronounced similarly? I don’t know the vowel markers for Swedish. My brain is saying “circle means open mouth” so it would be sort of a WALL-mah. I know it’s probably wrong but my inner child won’t shut up on the subject 😂
just like true becomes truth, and long becomes length, and grow becomes growth, rue becomes ruth. so even though we don't use "ruth" anymore, it's like the bridge between "rue" and "ruthless"
The only time I've seen ruth used was by Tolkien in his poem about Beren and Luthien: "No ruth did feel the marshalled legions of his hate, on whom did wolf and raven wait."
One word common where I lived in west lancashire we used 'fettled'. As in 'ya fettled lass?' Are you ready girl? And 'firtle' as in to firtle in your pocket or bag for your door key. Or that drawer full of useful things for an allen key or spare cash.
I don't know if it's an Australian thing or just my family thing, but "kempt" and "ruthful" are words that I've definitely heard people use and have used myself without finding it strange or out of place
The way some English people are bad at speaking their own language (including yours truly), 'ruthful' could be mistaken for 'rueful.' And as 'rueful' means a feeling of remorse or sorrow, perhaps there's a long lost and historic connection between the two words?
Not Australian, but I'm Finnish but my mother's family spoke Swedish and my grandfather was bilingual with German on top. Most people in Finland speak Finnish and I mostly don't have Swedish speaking friends. I'm quite often in a situation where I have no idea if some weird frase or word is an actual Swedish or possibly German word or a "family word". I know my kids probably don't know how many words they use are our "family words" because me and their father are fond of word play and adopting some silly words the kids came up when they were little, so we have lots. Even I forget many words I use are nonsense to people. But some I intentionally want to infiltrate into common language, because they are great words! Finnish is a weird language though and making up words that are still understandable to other finns is quite normal.
I saw a video around the same topic 4 years ago by Nerdsync 'Young Justice Explained: why isn't anyone just "whelmed?"', which covered the topic in context of Robin's jokes in the 'Young Justice' TV show. Your video was great covering a broader context of such words.
This kind of reminds me of Robin from the cartoon Young Justice, one of his lines early in the show is "Everyone is always overwhelmed or underwhelmed but nobody is ever just whelmed"
Top tip: if a neologism (new word) is used meaningfully, it's a word. Just consider how awesome this is: if you start using a word that people understand, there's a real chance it might be included in a dictionary and become popular some day. So use these!
'Furl' is a perfectly genuine word - it simply means to roll up; such as to furl a sail or flag. Most modern sailing yachts have 'furlong headsail', in that they roll around the forestay instead of being removed and folded.
When I was in school (Australia) in the early 1960s, I had the job of "furling the flag", at the end of the day. That is, folding it up. The Oxford Dictionary has an entry referring to "furling headsail". The root of 'furling' appears to mean "to bind".
The lost positives are a clue to something else that has been lost. I wrote a whole book about that. Well done for picking up a thread that will unravel a lot more than just some words!
In the title of the last chapter of his novel “I, Robot”, Isaac Asimov reversed a common cliché into “The Evitable Conflict”. Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger In a Strange Land” has a chapter (the first or maybe second) describing Valentine Michael Smith, titled “His Maculate Origin”. An example of a “seamful” change of subject would be Monty Python’s “And now for something completely different”.
I have seen occasional references to "The Society for the Restoration of Lost Positives." I'd join. Also, are there any differences in use of lost positives between American and British English?
I think Asimov wrote a story called The Evitable Conflict. I remember reading something called that in my teens and I don't think it was just the last chapter of I Robot, though I've read that, so maybe I'm getting confused. 🤔
A nice example of a lost positive is the German (!) noun "Harm", which is the same in English, incidentally, which was still used by Goethe, but is not in use today. However, its negation, the adjective "harmlos" (harmless) is still with us - while both are of course still in use in the English language.
It is very similar in Swedish (where we have "harmlös"), though until very recently "harm" or "harmsen" was still used in an abstracted way: meaning the feeling of having been emotionally hurt.
I was thinking about lost positives in the German language while watching the video and I was so sure that we don't have that. But harmlos / harmvoll changed my mind! Nice discovery today :)
@@thorstenjaspert9394 Genau, im Englischen gibt es harmful, aber harmvoll nicht. Das wird wohl auch irgendwann nicht mehr benutzt worden sein in der Bevölkerung und ist jetzt veraltet.
@@thorstenjaspert9394 Hab ich schon von Leuten gehört die soviel Englisch lesen und schreiben das sie anfangen deutsche und englische Wörter durcheinander zu werfen, klingt weniger seltsam als man meinen würde
I would argue that Susie Dent is wrong *morphologically* about "nocent" being a lost negative. It is the positive form of the pair; innocent is the negative. Semantically, "innocent" is more positive, in the sense that we regard innocence as being better than "nocence" (or guilt).
Remember "Primum non nocere", and innocent still has the meaning of "not harming", rather than "not guilty in a legal sense", in uses like 'an innocent insect', 'an innocent habit' and the like.
But "noncent" is the negative of "innocent" Here negative meaning opposite. It's not whether the meaning is positive or negative. But rather that one of a pair of opposites is missing
@@BryanLu0 The point is that the base word is nocent and innocent is the negation produced with a generic prefix. Unfortunately "positive" and "negative" are somewhat ambigous, what they are referring to (syntax or semantic)
@@BryanLu0 The root form of an adjective is always considered “positive”, in that it describes the existence of an attribute, whereas its negation describes the absence of that attribute.
Many years ago, I was visiting a friend and after general pleasantries were exchanged he said, "What's wrong? You seem disgruntled." But no, I was not and assured him that my gruntles were perfectly fine, thank you.
My understanding of positive/negative in this context is the whether the prefix/suffix negates the attached word or not, rather than whether the word has good or bad connotations
Did anyone understand Suzie Dent’s explanation of a lost negative? It seems maculate and nocent are the positive forms of each word. Stained and guilty are negative connotations but they are a positive state. Anyone understand where she was going with this?
I agree with you. “Nocent” may have negative connotations and “innocent” positive ones, but the same is true for positive and negative results when testing for a disease!
Yeah I'm not a fan of thinking of positive as referring to the connotation of the word, rather than simply the word which was negated. One should argue instead to call it the "lost negatee" or "lost subtrahend" (yuck) or something, before considering using the term "false negative" where negative refers to connotation. But, it's like if someone says "if negative x is 6, what is positive x?" and you argue, "no can do, no positive number has a negative that is positive". Like, grow up, we all know we're talking about +x = -(-x) = -6 Let's keep lost positive.
So interesting from a linguistic point of view to notice the divergent evolutionary processes undergone in different cultures. In your Germanic languages (English in your case), there appears to be some kind of "lost era" in the middle historical periods where languages seem to have drifted apart very early and very drastically from a common, ancestral root. In our Romance languages (Spanish in my case), the ingrained cultural weight of Latin is firmly and deeply rooted in our thinking and speech, rendering the "lost positives" concept virtually nonexistent, except for a few examples. Our negative/positive prefixes and suffixes to that matter are utterly logical and common-day use. Fascinating video as usual, Rob. Looking forward to your next collab with Susie Dent!!
The introduction of French into English in the aftermath of the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066 CE had a crucial impact on the formation of Middle and Modern English as explained in Baker, Curt (Spring 2016) "The Effects of the Norman Conquest on the English Language," Tenor of Our Times: Vol. 5, Article 5, excerpts of which I have quoted below for your convenience. "The time of Roman rule in England is where historians begin to understand English language formation; from there forward a picture begins to form as researchers piece together the development of English. Different influences on the development of English include indigenous populations in England, Anglo-Saxon influence, and finally the Norman Conquest, which scholars consider a “defining moment in the development of the English language….” Although it is one of many factors in the evolution of English, the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and the resulting effects were crucial in the formation of the English language. An understanding of the complex nature of the English language requires a detailed study of the history of English in the time preceding the Norman Conquest. This consideration of the linguistic landscape begins during the time of Roman authority in England. Romans, invading from Italy, brought their own culture, traditions, and language when they conquered England. For reasons that will not be addressed in this paper, however, the Romans did not attempt to change the existing culture, traditions, and language like the Normans. Nonetheless, the period of Roman rule is significant to the study of the English language - historians find ample evidence during this time period for the existence of indigenous people groups and their own unique dialects in the time of Roman rule. Their presence, however, raises questions. Scholars have speculated that these seemingly indigenous peoples are actually of mainland-European descent. This is evidenced in the Welsh, who likely descended from Spain. Similarly, the Britons living in the lowlands appear to have connections to Gaul. These native peoples spoke dialects reflective of their differing backgrounds, rendering it unlikely that a national, unifying language existed before the late tenth and early eleventh century AD. Evidence for a central language is first apparent during the reign of King AEthelred around 1000 AD. During this time period there was an explosion of writing in Latin and Old English...This flurry of law codes and writings reflects a centralization and unification of language, arguably the first recorded in the history of English. French entered this linguistic environment in 1066 as a result of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror. The duke of Normandy, William had a legitimate claim to the English throne as the distant cousin of Edward the Confessor, king of England. With the death of Edward in January 1066, Duke William immediately declared himself the heir to the English throne, asserting that Edward had chosen him as the successor...Upon the death of Edward, Harold denied the entirety of William’s claim and seized the throne. William promptly responded by invading England in September 1066, crushing Harold’s defenses and establishing himself as King of England on Christmas Day 1066... He [King William] also rewrote law codes utilizing French vocabulary and loanwords that slightly altered legal procedure. With his coronation in 1066, King William officially established Anglo-French “…alongside the traditional Latin as the language of public state business and of the court.” The limited available records, solidifying that early law codes were written nearly entirely in French, confirm this... These literary works - Domesday Book and law codes - helped cement French into English legal practice and, eventually, general speech. Although significant, the influence of legal vocabulary on the English language pales in comparison to the impacts of social pressure from the upper French class and its effect on common speech. King William, largely through the giving of land, brought French nobles to England, forming an aristocracy of French-speakers. Initially, this upper-class failed to influence colloquial speech but rather made its impact on vocabulary through the elite caste as a result of the limited literacy rates in England at the time. Nevertheless, as the official language of the state and the one spoken by society’s most prominent figures, it is not surprising that French loanwords began to make their way into the English lexicon in the period immediately following the Conquest. For instance, the French word trône appears for the first time, from which the English word throne is derived. Similarly, the word saint makes its debut, a Latin word brought to English by French. A relatively confined influence seems to be the limit of French on English immediately following the conquest; by 1250, however, the effect increased significantly. Nearly 200 years after the conquest, French was sufficiently established in England and rapidly gaining popularity among the general public. As the primary language of the aristocratic portion of society and the law, French had a trickle-down effect on common speech, gradually becoming more attractive to commoners. This consistent presence of French sounds and words in routine conversation eventually led to general acceptance of formerly unnatural morphemes and expressions. As French became more prevalent and desirable among Englishmen, the amount of French words and units of language that came to be included in English speech and lexicon naturally increased. Additionally, entirely new words formed from combinations of existing French and English words. This development, known as derivational morphology, ushered in changes to English in sentence formation and vocabulary... With increased French influence on common speech, formation of new words with French roots or affixes became common. For example, the word hindrance resulted from a combination of the Old English verb hinder and the French suffix -ance, used in the construction of nouns. Thus, the merging of an English verb and a French suffix formed a new word entirely. In addition, English words are occasionally formed entirely from French, as in the word coverage, a combination of the French word cover and the French suffix -age. Although there are many examples of word formation according to this pattern, the derivational morphology of English is not limited to French plus English or vice versa. Latin also plays a role, evidenced in the word involvement, a Latin verb involve with the French suffix -ment, used in the construction of nouns. Another example of mixing languages is coveted, a Latin word brought to English as a French loanword. The addition of a native - originally Germanic - suffix -ed forms the adjective describing something highly desirable. Each of these morpheme combinations indicates a distinct French presence in the formation of English words following the Norman Conquest, evidencing the profound French impact on English. Many people groups and native dialects have influenced English, including seemingly indigenous peoples with connections to various European demographics and foreign influences like the Romans, Angles, Saxons, and finally Normans. Nevertheless, the linguistic effects of Duke William of Normandy’s takeover of Britain mark that event as a crucial element in the formation of the English language."
I could say the same about my own native language, Portuguese. Words like "maculado", "inevitável", "inapto" are perfectly regular and common. However, we suffer the same with "inflamável" and "inepto".
It is not so much the Germanic languages in general that drifted apart that drastically from the ancestors. It is especially English that did it because it was conquered by the french speaking Normans. Just as an example in Standard German the positive of "ruthless" is not lost. There are the words "rücksichtslos" (ruthless) and "rücksichtsvoll" (considerate -> "ruthful"), where "Rücksicht" means "consideration". The "los" and "voll" postfixes have the same meanings as "less" and "ful" have in English. I don't know if "ruth" and "Rücksicht" are somehow related or have different roots. Still the video states that "ruth" meant "compassion" or "empathy" and this is very close to the meaning of "Rücksicht", so most likely there is a connection. That said, "Rücksicht" is not a single word, but a compound word of "Rück" (back) and "Sicht" (view). The word therefore gives a hint to the concept it describes, while in English the meaning of "ruth" was lost.
@@patrickm3981 _Rücksicht_ and _ruth_ are indeed etymologically unrelated. If they did exist, the etymological equivalents would be _*ridgesight_ and _*Reude_ respectively. Incidentally, _ridge_ and _Rücken_ give a fun example of how semantic drift causes languages to diverge: both derive from West Germanic _*hrugi_ meaning "spine" or "back", with the English word having moved towards the "spine" meaning, while the German one has moved towards the "back" meaning.
@@luminiferous1960 how did the romans influence english? certainly not directly as they ruled great britain before the angles, saxons and jutes started invading it. To be more precise, these germanic peoples first invading during the tail end of roman rule, but even then, direct roman influence on english is minimal, as far as i know. Also, saying the anglo saxons influenced is weird, as they were the ones who took english's root languages to great britain.
This is awesome. My brother and I have been doing this for years, and haven't limited our use cases to positives per se, any modifier is subject to scrutiny. Typical example: I was mayed to find that my co-worker is quite gruntled in spite of his proposal being jected. Some interesting doubles too, like does cretion = indiscretion? BTW one of my favorite Simpsons snippets features a doctor with a strong accent, who after causing an explosion excitedly exclaims "Inflammable means flammable? What a country!!"
Ah, thank you! Your verbal treatise left me thoroughly gustful and jected. Let the grateless hordes be turbed by your brilliant wisdom--I am combobulated, and that's perfect.
Ironically, the positive of dejected should be *surjected, which is confusingly also what the positive of subjected should be. Speaking of “subject”, the native Germanic parallel word is *underthrow, which it is doubtful if such a word has ever been in use in English.
Love this. Reminded me of the George Carlin bit. _Then there are words we need. Words that don’t exist. "Chalant." We have "nonchalant," so the concept of chalance exists. What about "chalant"? "Nearfetched." Something very obvious. "Say, that’s nearfetched, Bill!"_
Given that Chalant is a family name, I've wondered if the word nonchalant came about because of some small-town drama; e.g. "Don't be like those busy-body, annoying Chalants." or something to that effect.
A character in one of the Oz books used the word "gormish", saying "You are being gormish, and I detest gormishness!" It seemed, in context, to mean "you are disagreeing with me, and I don't like that!" My family has used it in that sense for more than fifty years. So while "gormful" may be an awkward word, "gormish" seems to me to be perfectly cromulent.
@@hithere640 You've got me thinking again. Why must we enlarge a photo? Why can't we dislittle or unsmall it? For that matter, why can't we undarken or disbrighten it? It's not perative, just curious. Oh, is there a word for not curious?
Three things. First I always wonder why these, then you. Second the Norwegian word for calm is rolig so wonder if there is a link to unruly and the calm in Norwegian. And lastly i really love your presentation and your obvious love of language, and because you truely find linguistics fascinating, you bring us in to your world so we too are fascinated. This is a gift thanks for sharing.
Reminds me of that bit of rural wisdom from the pre-safety of automobiling: "Ruth and Johnny, Side by side, Went out for an auto ride. John hit a bump; Ruth hit the tree; And John kept driving Ruthlessly." Proud to be an English speaker no matter how inaptly.😊
I've always found it curious that words like "ruthless" and "nonchalant" have no opposites, but I didn't know "lost positives" are a thing! Now, I've not only learned a bunch of lost positives, but I also learned the word "gormless" as well. Thanks for the information!
Another couple of words that come to mind which aren't really orphaned negatives (but sound like they could be from their common usage) are "nonplussed" and "dishevelled". I always like the idea that it could be possible for a person to be "plussed". 🙂
When I first learned 'dishevelled', my teacher always mispronounced it as "dis-shelved". This led me to think it was meant to describe something that looks like it has been swept off a shelf (which is not far off from its actual meaning of something messy or disorganized).
since people felt that nonplussed has to have a negative non-, like of un-interested and in-different, this has given way to the contronymic meaning of nonplussed: unsurprised.
dishevelled, according to merriam webster, comes from anglo-french deschevelé, which is "dis-" + "chevoil" (hair). so shevelled, if it existed, might mean the same thing as dishevelled? or maybe "hairy"?
Surprised that couth is not used anymore, my mum and aunt used it all the time growing up always in place of posh or in good taste and I still say it today.
I recall it being in the lyrics of the song "Westering Home". Someone is described as "couthy and kindly", so I suspect it lived on longer in Scotland.
@musingwithreba9667, My mother uses ‘couth’ that way, too, as do I on occasion. Neither my mother nor I use it to anyone’s face though. That would be offensive!
I can't believe you got to interview Susie Dent! That's how you know you've truly made it as a Word Nerd. I met her at one of her shows and she did a book signing after, so obviously I bought the copy I had from home and got her to sign it. She said she liked my name and I made a very funny joke about how I got it for my birthday...which I then had to repeat several times because the crowd was so noisy. I felt decidedly unfunny on the third or fourth time of having to say it louder than 50+ people.
1:55 Botanist here. We still use the "maculate" word in the Latin name epithets of some species. For example _Conium maculata_ (poison hemlock), named that because it has spots.
‘Gormenghast’ which is similar to the surname you suggest already exists in fantasy fiction as the name of an earldom in a series of novels by Mervyn Peake.
I have been looking for the term "lost positive" for so long! I had a conversation with a friend ages ago about how some words are almost always used with a meaning altering prefix and never just a lone root. I had no idea how to research this concept because I just didn't know what one would would call this group of words. You've scratched an itch my brain that has been lingering there for literal years hahaha. Thanks for the video. Great stuff.
I was confused for a minute, thinking I had seen this before, but no, Name Explain covered some of these words just over a week ago in his video on orphaned words. Weird that you both had the same idea not too far apart in time
I googled Susie Dent and it seems one of the books that Rob mentioned was released just two months ago. They probably both read it and formed a video idea around it.
@@Nikolaj11I believe that Name Explain's video came from a Patreon supporter suggestion, so possibly that viewer got the idea from there and suggested it to Patrick, perhaps without mentioning the source of their inspiration.
From 'inscrutable' I infer not only 'scrutable' but the verb 'scrute', as in: "He may have thought his intent well-disguised, but I scruted it nonetheless."
This isn't the only video on RUclips discussing lost positives. Funnily enough, earlier this day, I saw Name Explain's video from 8 days ago about the subject, though that video calls them orphaned negatives, and the video is called Orphaned Words.
Yeah, I googled Susie Dent and it seems one of the books that Rob mentioned was released just two months ago. They probably both read it and formed a video idea around
This makes me think of the running gag in the Young Justice cartoon where Robin and Kid Flash made "Aster" the positive form of "Disaster" , and they did have a discussion on "why is everyone underwhelmed or overwhelmed? Why can't anyone just be 'whelmed' ?"
I assumed that the origin of "disgruntled" came from "gruntle" being an old term for a pig's snout, and by colloquial inference the nose. Therefore "disgruntled" is to feel you've had your nose metaphorically cut off, ie. disrespected as in the archaic punishment of cutting someone's nose off.
I love this. As a daily business communicator, I emphasize the power and clarity in stating the positive rather than the indirect inverse e.g. “I’m unsure about…” vs. “I’m not sure about…” 😊
You make a good point. Sometimes differences are subtle. A skeptical, untrusting person may be diligent and loyal. Hence, he is both faithless and faithful.
@@thejoin4687 two different things. Disagree is to differ in opinion or belief. Don't agree is less committal. I may differ or have no opinion. It's much like "I don't think so" and "I think not", or "I don't like you" and "I dislike you." I don't like Nigerian food, but since I've never tasted it, I don't dislike it either.
@@bruceboettcher9977I think that's right in most cases; disagree is more likely to imply active rejection, whereas don't agree sounds more like an absence of a positive ensorsement. On the other hand, "don't agree" can also sound committal depending on the intonation. The questionnaire draft used a mix of both, but we were unclear if this was intentional.
@@thejoin4687 I agree with you completely. When I edit business documents, I often needed to go to the source and ask, "what do you mean?" Many writers don't make clear distinctions, hence the need for an editor 😊.
In my native language (Portuguese, Brazilian variant, but the Iberian variant is supposed to be the same in this regard) valuable and invaluable would have quite opposite meanings. Yet in English the latter means something even more valuable. That said, this is one of the most invaluable RobWords episode. I really mean it! English meaning, I mean.
Great video as usual. I am also surprised that couth is not used anymore as it does seem to be familiar to me. In a similar vein, it has always confused me that there only ever seems to be a good riddance. I can think of many bad riddances in my life.
Couth is definitely still used where I live (Central New York). But these words only appear if people use them in books/web pages/articles so a lot of "laymen" uses go unrecorded. We also say something like "Well, that is just not couth" a lot. I guess we could say "well, that is uncouth" but that has too much of a royal air about it.
I was surprised by the suggestion 'Couth' isn't used anymore. I heard it a lot from my parents generation when they were passing judgement on friends, music etc. - and almost always in this context. More than once a friend told me their mother had pronounced me 'couth', i.e. they didn't object to my being invited back to the house. If something was couth, like a record or a jacket, it was allowed to be shown to the grandparents.
I literally was talking about this to my mom and finding out some false lost positives vs real ones this past week. Its so hilarious that this came out right after that.
Your content just gets better and better along with your presentation skills and editing. I have long known that the "dis" in "disgrunted" was merely emphatic, but had never considered just how many other examples of lost positives and false negatives there might be. As well, connecting the modern English to Middle, Old, Norse, French, German, Latin all serve to reinforce this amazing capability we humans possess for what is termed "speech." Great work, and a valuable source of understanding the human heritage.
A verse from a widely-sung hymn has the word 'whelming' in it: His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
Your videos are precious. I am pretty sorry this technology didn't exist when I first started learning English some 30+ years ago. Thank you for creating interesting and intelligently prepared scripts for your work. My wife and I highly appreciate them!
Theres a kids tv show where one of the villains gets upset because something that isn't ironic is "completely ronic" I saw that episode 12 years ago, and could not tell you one other line or what characters were featured or what the plot was outside of the general plot structure of the show. He blew my mind so hard. It was the first time I realized that we had lost positive words, and i never had any language to explore it. I needed this video so bad. I have needed this video for 12 years.
That sounds word for word like a running joke in the show Phineas and Ferb, where Dr. Doofenshmirtz would react to the appearance of his nemesis with, in the first instance "How unexpected. . . And by that I mean COMPLETELY EXPECTED!" before trapping said nemesis. This became a running joke when in later instances he started using different adjectives, like "completely canny!" which led to him using lost/false opposing equivalents, like "completely ironic" or "completely peccable."
That was a very gormful look. Thank you for this. I have been awaiting this video awhile. My wife and I have discussed whether or not one can be ruthful. Now we know, and I feel good in telling her she's full of ruth. (Maybe she'll stop asking me, "Who's Ruth?")
Gorm (the old) is the name of a danish king from the viking age. He's the father of Harald Bluetooth, and the oldest confirmed king in the danish royal family.
I've seen the phrase written in older texts about someone "being without ruth and without pity". Maybe I'm becoming a fossil, but I find it sad that language seems to devolve vs. evolving. My own children's vocabulary is sadly lacking, and my son was an honors English teacher! Oy! (which is a word that should be inducted into English!).
I love this! It fits right in to my own tendency to question such words and similar issues with words that are not "lost positives," but seeming contradictions. For instance, "tired" has not exactly the same sense as "retired." If you are tired, you have exhausted yourself; if you are retired, you have reached the age at which you cease gainful employment. You may or may not be tired at that point, but it does not mean "tired again." Nor does it mean to install new tires on your vehicle (American English spelling). And what about "amulatory" and "ambulance?" Someone who is ambulatory is able to walk; someone needing a ride in an ambulance likely is not able to be ambulatory. Sounds like the same root, so what gives? If you are "incapacitated," can you then become "capacitated?" If we have "inalienable" rights, do we then also have "alienable" ones? Or would that mean the aliens have arrived? And why are there so many prefixes that mean the negative? (In, un, non, de, dis: inattentive; unappreciated, nonsense, degreased; disappointed)...??? But wait a minute! Disappointed has nothing to do with being appointed! Then there are words with which such prefixes are not used: enjoy or don't enjoy, but not "disenjoy: or "unenjoy!" And thanks for including "disgruntled." I've often posited that same question! I could go on and on....so I truly enjoy these types of videos. I hope to see some of these addressed in a future post! 🙂
That's probably a coincidence, because 'retired' comes from latin re- (as again) and 'traere' (to pull), via french 'retirer' which means... to remove, to leave. "Tired" from a quick search is old english for 'to end'.
there are alienable rights, they are the rights that can be made alien to you (i.e. separated from you), for example the right to drive a car can be removed after too many traffic violations
In- and un- have Germanic roots, de- and dis- come from Latin, and non- has both Germanic and French etymology. English just takes a bit of something from everywhere
The ambulatory status of the vehicle and the person are unrelated. There is no contradiction if the vehicle is able to move and the person is not. Also, ambulance is short for ambulance cart (the shortening happened before cars existed), which took casualties to the ambulance (field hospital), named for its ability to move with the army.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of words that have kept their antithetical word, but where the meanings have drifted so that they are no longer opposites. One example that comes to mind is "graceful" and "graceless", the former being, at least usually, describing physical activity, while the latter is usually a description of social behaviour.
This episode was so much fun. I would've loved it even more if you'd spread it over two or three episodes and given more detail on the word origins. That's the best part. :)
I remember reading "underwhelmed" for the first time in a blog back in 2003 and thought it was incredibly witty. Now it's used all the time. I'm also pretty sure "so" used as an intensifier with 'hungry' is fairly new too. In the early 90s seems to be the first time I heard people say they were "so hungry".
@@rebeccawinter472 This is weird. I was just thinking about this comment last night when I realized it wasn't "so hungry" where so as an intensifier was new. It was in phrases like "I'm so looking forward to that".
I wasso happy to see couth on this list. Uncouth was one of my mother's favorite words, often used to gently and humorously chide my father's table manners, while warning us kids not to follow in his ill-mannered footsteps. It madame often wonder if it was ok to be couth, since it seemed so important to her that we not be UNcouth. 😂
So appreciate someone as nerdy as I. I have masters in English, French literature (especially old/middle French) and European history. Keep it up. You sound like you enjoy teaching...I'm retired from that profession.
I love your videos, especially on the peculiarities of spelling. Also I really enjoyed your videos on reading/understanding French without French knowledge, simply by replacing some letters. Could you please make a similar video on Spanish? My family have to go to Mexico in 6 months and live there for 2+ years. Such a video would be a life saver 🙏🏻😃
Feckless & gormless seem to be used together often in my experience, perhaps surprisingly lol Wish I had a better comment for this one, Rob & friends, but I gotta like, share, comment 😂
Although they have negative connotations, to say that something is 'nocent' or 'maculate' is a positive assertion of a fact. I would say the wonderful Ms Dent is wrong in this case; the function of the word is what counts here, and using 'negative' in the sense of a connotation as opposed to the quality of an assertion is mistaken.
As an addition to your questionning about "nonchalant", in Quebec french, we use the word "achalant" for someone/something annoying... 😉 Edit: After carefully researching the origin, it seems that the modern form is actually issued from the old french "chaloir" ("chaleur" or heat) that comes from the latin word calere. It is still an intetesting question as to why "heat" became a synonym of annoying...
Well I can't speak to the reason historically, it makes perfect sens to me as a Louisianian. The heat is mighty achalant here. Likewise, if the heat itself weren't, the sounds that usually accompany it from the frogs can get a bit annoying and if nothing else, if someone's getting your blood pressure up they're probably making you feel a bit hot.
@@jean-clauderainville677 Winn, but I spent most of my adulthood in Lafayette parish and that's what I'd recommend. Parts of Baton Rouge are also worth it and if you're going for Mardi Gras and can stand the crowds, there's New Orleans. Even off the festival season, New Orleans is good for a one-off visit, especially for the Audubon Zoo and the battleship that was turned into a floating museum. Just be prepared to see some jarring income inequality, especially in Baton Rouge because of how close the low-income and run down part of town is to the university which is borderline pristine. New Orleans at least has more of a gradient.
Achalant sounds like a kind of unpleasant heat, which would make sense considering that the "a" prefix is often used to describe a lack of something or a negation of something. To me at least it would make perfect sense to call something nonchalant as unbothersome (is that even a word actually?) and something achalant as, well, bothersome, if we follow that same logic.
Actually, "chalant" is (or was since that verb isn't used much nowadays) the past participle of the verb "chaloir." It became an adjective (this is very common in French) and then the final "t" became a "d." So it is "chaland" in modern French and it means "client of a shop." We also have the word "achalandé" to talk about a buzy shop. From the same etymology we have the word "achalant" which means "something or someone that is annoying."
This is cool on another level. I've been researching inserted letters in words when word sound shift happens. Because chalant is a past participle, my research suggested that it originally was something like "chalat" or "chalad" with the -t or -d being added to denote a final action. But since the "a" vowel is located in the upper back part of the mouth, and the t/d are located in the front of the mouth, in fast speech the mouth slides past the "n" sound. And eventually, when things get written down, people hear the n, so it gets inserted into the spelling. I have found many instances of this in Germanic words, and English words coming from Germanic; but since I'm less familiar with French, this is one of the few I've seen. Thank you for the help in my research!
There's a town nearby named Kemptville in eastern Ontario. When you mentioned Kempt discussing false positives, I was hoping that kempt and unkempt used to be synonymous. The town was named after a colonial British Governor General so the name had nothing to do with the appearence of the town, but it would give me a snicker driving past.
As someone who sells and actually reads old, rare and antiquarian books, I can proudly say that these ‘lost positives’ are not lost with me. Long live antiquarian booksellers.
Huzza! Huzza! Huzza!
Does the shop across the road sell strictly quarian books?
🤣🤣🤣@@pooroldnostradamus
@@pooroldnostradamus Good one!
(tosses cap in air) Huzzah!
I think Susie is wrong about calling nocent and maculate "lost negatives." While they do denote ideas with negative connotations, grammatically they are still positives - they indicate the presence of something, rather than its absence
'maculate' in particular - quite clearly means 'stained' or 'marked.'
Thank you. My thoughts exactly.
For sure. Maculte and nocent may indicate a positive evil, but are positive none the less. Immaculate and innocent have a negating prefix, hence negative words. Really the evaluative judgement about weather a word signifes something good or bad is distinct from its status linguistically as a negative or positive. To me it seems that the former is a prescriptive matter, and thereby outside the realm of linguistics as a sceince, while the latter is a descriptive fact about a word's structure.
Exactly what I was thinking. They describe negative concepts (and you could even argue that's subjective), but linguistically they are positives.
it reminds me of positive and negative feedback loops, terms yoinked from engineering after the term feedback was stolen for commentary or back-and-forth
if i drink, then think about my deepest regrets, then i drink more so i forget about them, that's a positive feedback loop!
positive feedback is also called exacerbating feedback, self-reinforcing feedback, mass panic is a positive feedback loop where each individual will spark more panic
if years later i am given a drink, i remember all of the throwing up, i can't even finish a glass, that's a negative feedback loop! self-regulating feedback that is
it's not the worst crime but we should be careful when we muck up technical speech with figures of speech
May family occasionally uses "gruntled" just to sound silly-- I had no idea that was P.G. Wodehouse's doing! That makes it even better.
I totally agree.
Can you go from being gruntled to disgruntled and then regruntled?
I knew it from PGW
"the pig was definitely gruntled"
@@chrismiller5198 Can you find it in Woodhouse?
@@RobWordsyour channel is wonderful! A video "rewboss" made is a review of your "10 german words English should steal". After watching his review, I decided to have a closer look at your content.
Back in grade school, I remember that we had innocent and nocent as spelling words for the week. Everyone was confused by nocent, including the parents and teachers.
i guess everybody was innocent causw they know no nocent
Causw
In Dutch we know the word onnozel, but we have completely forgotten the meaning of nozel.
@@EdwinHofstra Ik ler Nederlands nu!
@@juiuice On the other front paw, do they know the nocentious?
A friend of mine is a professor of Composition and Rhetoric, we often had discussions about words like these. One of my favorites was "refurbished", and we discussed how we had never seen anything "furbished". Then I saw a truck at a local resort listing "furbishing" as a service.
Fully furbished fittings
I sumed furbishing my apartment, had a break, and then resumed.
My appartment came furbished.
Yeah, I've only heard it in specific context of "fully furbished", i.e. with furniture and ready to go, but even then most people would prefer "fully furnished" and I think assume the former to be a typo or not even realize a different word had been said. But it also means to be supplied, doesn't it?
@@Soitisisit Furnished means fitted with furniture, furbished means in good condition or clean.
The Wodehouse use of gruntled reminds me of the excellent Tim Curry line in Clue, after establishing he was the butler, a guest asked him what he did. "I butle, sir!"
"Buttle" (sp) is considered a real word, though. One who buttles is a butler.
Do chandlers chandle
@@NeonBeeCat If they do, then a milliner must millin and a carpenter carpents. 🤭
That was also originally an Wodehouse one. "Jeeves, though not a butler, can if needed butle with the best of them."
“Well kempt” is a pretty common phrase. I’ve not heard kempt much, but I have heard it.
Also I’ve personally used the word “couth” before. I really like it. I heard it get used a few times (by the same person) and picked it up. I haven’t used it much, but still.
In the US, both "well kempt" (think grooming) and "well kept" (think housekeeping) are pretty common phrases. E.g. "a well kept garden" or "a well kempt beard."
@@flatjesus That feels like it heavily overlaps with a pronunciation variance though. The meanings are indistinguishable, so I'd hazard a guess that it's rather up to chance whether or not most people actually mean to say "kept" vs "kempt".
Thank you, I’ve also used well kempt and couth in my regular speech. I’m American, I wonder if their usage is different here than in the UK.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 i disagree, the meanings are distinguishable. Kempt refers to body hair. If someone is well kempt they are clearly well shevelled, as opposed to being dishevelled.
yup, well kempt is something ive heard often referring to stuff like hair, and couth is definitely not a word that isnt used - maybe less than kempt, but still not unused
A *slight* correction on the Flammable/Inflammable issue. There is a subtle distinction between the two in strictly literal sense. "Inflammable" is meant to mean "Able to be set on fire", while "Flammable" is meant to mean "Capable of bursting into flame" - the former implies that you would need some exterior sort of ignition to set the substance ablaze, while the latter will ignite of its own volition, given the right conditions (which may be narrow or broad, depending). Naturally, since the two meanings are very similar, and easy to confuse with one another, they have melded into a single common meaning over the years from common use.
My father was involved in a committee that considered this for the hazard plates you see on tanker lorries. The idea was to standardise them for international trade. The committee went with flammable because the "in" prefix was likely to cause confusion with non-English speakers, who risked thinking it means non-flammable; unfortunate if you were trying to extinguish a fire.
So is paper "flammable", "inflammable" or both? To me it sounds weird to describe it as "inflammable" but I can't explain why.
In the US, OSHA has mandated flammable be used to describe substances which can burst into flame because so many people thought inflammable meant not flammable. Combustible refers to ordinary material which will burn if set alight.
Fuel tankers regularly use Inflammable Liquid a bit of an Oxymoron since it is flammable and will self ignite under certain conditions being applied like static electricity.
Is there a difference between inflame and enflame, aside from spelling and common suffixes?
I think the beauty of language is that regardless of whether a word is "real" you could say nearly all of these lost positives or false positives and most people can put together what you mean. That sort of intellectual elasticity must've been crucial before we allowed a bunch of self important nerds decided to police and taxonomize language.
Well said! Convention is one thing for general clarity, but we've been playing with our linguistic toolkits since we've had them!
I remember the moment this idea hit me. Early in my college days, a professor was talking about Latin being a dead language as opposed to English, which is constantly changing and evolving. I dropped many of my deeply-held beliefs and snootiness about "proper language" after that. Adaptation and alteration is good for a language, not a degradation of it.
We were taught to read using "context clues" and the meaning of prefixes, suffixes and how to discern the root word for exactly this reason.
I've seen 'nocent' used in medical literature to mean toxic or harmful. In biology, especially taxonomic descriptions, 'maculate' means spotted.
In your eye, there's an oval spot called the Macula (part of the retina needed for colour vision). Macular Degeneration results in severe damage to it. Macula is the Latin word for spot. 👍
Speaking of spot, Cerberus, its possibly a corrupted version of a word for Spot/spotted. 😄 The guard dogo of the underworld is named Spot!
Bloody latin again!
I wonder if it is related to the word 'nocebo'
@@davidlloyd7597 Yup. Same root.
I was told once of an area in an airport, post Security, that was called (by an official sign) of the "Recombobulation Area." Clearly the place to go after being discombobulated by the TSA.
Space for ‘Recombobulation’ is wonderfully soothing, a comforting concept. Perhaps the idea of Recombobulation ought to be extended from an area to an era. The disconcerting crescendo of disorienting discombobulation that has been overwhelmingly preponderant during the first quarter of the 21st century cries out to be countered, to be followed by a calm era of Recombobulation.
I've heard of this! Thanks for the reminder to designate my man-cave as the "Recombobulation Zone".
@@jonrolfson1686 strongly agree.
Hope you took a picture of that sign!
I don't know which airport has this!! But ever since I saw that this words has been one of my favorites!
What I think is cool about a lot of these is that the "positves" aren't really lost - they're just morphed a bit. Like unkempt/combed, or inept/aptitude. The traces of the lost positives still exist, but they don’t form a perfect pair anymore.
You do hear inapt used sometimes, though, to describe something that just doesn't quite work, like an inapt metaphor.
What this video really showed me is how differences between the US and the UK, I've never heard gormless in my life but kempt is a normal word
@@lukasg4807 I assume because of the German Influence in the US as well... kempt just sounds as the right participle in my ears.. German is gekämmt, except for the prefix ge- , that also gets dropped in some dialects, sounding exactly the same.
I've come across kempt so often that I had no idea that it was somehow fallen out of use.
It might be that the fantasy and scifi books I've read, used it to sound different. And in online discussions, non native English speakers use it because it feels right :)
Wieldy however, while it may not be a common word for most people, but anyone who works with hand tools or weapons will be familiar with it.
Especially in the historical martial arts community, discussing the wieldiness of pointy and blunt whacking implements is a daily occurrence.
@@lukasg4807 Interesting
What's great about this is that you can just use these lost-positive words if you want. People can tell you "you're wrong, that's not a word" but if you start using it... it becomes a word that is in use. And the meaning is often quite obvious as just being the opposite of the more common negative.
I don't think so. Was the new Yorker article immediately clear to you?
@@sulaymankindi Yes, though it did sound a bit funny.
Respectfully disagree. Of course it depends on circumstances (one would not use unconventional language in a professional publication, say) but language is both plastic, as you suggest, and elastic. Words continually morph and sometimes even pop into existence.
@@Pebphiz good for you. Honoured to meet make above average intelligence acquaintance 😊
If enough people start using a word then yes.
However it appears that the future of English will be texting acronyms, noises, and baby talk with the words “like” and “literally” used as nearly every other part of speech with minimal punctuation used.
For example one today might hear a legal adult saying:
“I was like eatin my chicky nuggys and Aiden yeeted em out my hand. I was all like screee, like big mad, and he was like LOL so Riley’s all like OMG you wanna throw hands. Then he like yeeted my chocky milk in his face. Pshd FML fam.”
In its native written state it appears that all punctuation should be replaced with an emoji as both punctuation and conjunction in order to relay the emotions of the people involved.
So although many of us would love to see our language evolve into a more precise and growing language with more words in common with other languages. It instead appears that English is devolving into a primitive and lazy language that we might consider a sign of illiteracy. As result I generally avoid speaking to people under 30 and am unable to understand unless I have my daughter present to translate. I imagine this it what it was like for Julius Caesar when he first encountered the Britons, naked cannibals painted blue communicating in strange and primitive guttural noises. The kind of people that would eventually sack the later apathetic and accepting Rome causing total collapse as they were absolutely incapable of understanding the machinery or three ingredients to concrete mixtures.
"Indefatigable" is like a double negative squeezed into a single word. I'd love to see a video going over more examples of this!
I'm no expert, but I think "undefeated" and "indefensible" might be playing a similar game.
indefinite is a great one
Understandable and undeniable
@@spreddable
Finite, definite, indefinite... 🤔
I've never seen that word before in my life
One of my favourite books (well the whole series really) growing up was Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons", where one of the characters, Nancy, has changed her name from Ruth because they're playing at pirates and their uncle told them that pirates are ruthless.
Kempt, usually qualified with well-kempt has been a familiar word for as long as I can remember. It can be applied to people but quite often to pet animals.
I've almost exclusively heard it used to refer to a man's facial hair.
I have heard "well-kempt" more often than the bare "kempt".
Just outside Ottawa is a small town named Kemptville, which I assumed was named after someone, and now I’m going to have to dig a little deeper!
To my Dutch ears "kempt" means "gekamd" = combed, so well kempt is neatly combed. (And etymologically this seems to be no coincidence.)
I may have heard well kept instead of well kempt.
Couthie is a word still much used in Scotland - certainly in the NE, at any rate. It means something much closer to the original Old English as a couthie person is one who relates to us in a very pleasantly familiar way, someone we can feel instantly “at home” with.
My young daughter made the observation to my wife that the reason the toaster was not working was because it was plugged out. "Plugged in" and "unplugged" are what I would call an unbalanced pair. Cousins of "lost positives" I suppose. Apparently we needed to parentally correct our daughter but instead adopted her phraseology, lest we tell her to unplug the toaster only to have her take scissors to the end of the cord. Speaking of plugging, I always found it amusing that gangsters could plug a man with a revolver by filling him full of holes.
What if "deplug" was brought to the conversation? Seeing the idea of removing the plug eniterly, made me think I'd ask it in such a way-
Might you deplug the toaster?
I would say that there is the issue that unplugged sounds like a stative passive, while something is plugged out is more of an active passive, that someone has plugged it out, now it is unplugged.
another issue is, that English lost the distinction between un- and en(t)-/an(t)-, thus English speakers reuse the un- also for verbs, which is actually exclusively for adverbs and adjectives and nouns.
Your daughter was rather creative. It makes you think. Why don't we say it like that?
I knew a guy who came from Iran who was learning English. He accidentally knocked over my glass at a party and came to tell me. What he said was "I poured your drink out".
The bullets would plug the holes they made !!
Growing up in the southern US (50 years ago) the word "couth" was used quite a bit, and meant - just as you described - mannerly, or traditionally acceptable. I was really surprised to hear you say it was obsolete and no longer used.
"Couth" is still used here on the west coast of Canada with the same meaning (well-mannered) but definitely is a word older folks use more than Gen X and Z.
Still used in the North East of Scotland too
I was going to say that it gets plenty of use in Dundee. Would Paw Broon himself not want a coothie wee dug tae fetch his pipe and slippers? @@Martinjlove
I also live in the southern US. I've definitely heard the word more than a couple times and was also rather surprised to hear it's considered obsolete.
I have heard "couth" used too, my family are from Yorkshire and I lived there as a child, so I'd say couth is still used there, along with other words and grammar considered to be generally obsolete.
And, not for the first time, I have found parallels in use in the US South - my wife is from Virginia, and we now live in NC.
Back around 1960, when my husband joined the U. S. Air force and got sent to Okinawa, the first thing you had to do when you got there was go to "Couth School." There was so much difference between the American and Asian ways of life that the USAF needed to teach servicemen (no women back then) how not to commit some awful cultural howler that would offend everybody. So yes, in one place at least, it was (fairly) recently a thing. Thank you for another delightful video!
In Dutch, the word 'chalant' (written as galant) still exists and means something along the lines of being civil, respectful and well-behaved, often used in a context to describe someone that is in high esteem to the opposite sex (i.e. attractive).
Thank you so much, Rob. I'm an old man who has taught a little, written a little, spoken a lot and has loved the English language for decades. Over the years, I've thought about lost positives but never seriously nor systematically. You have given me, as a person with linguistic influence in my small circle, an idea. If positives can be lost, why can't they be found? Documented or not, I shall commence to use these positives, neither ironically nor sensationally, but as good and useful words found in the attic and given new life. Please keep up with fine work. You are an ept teacher, indeed.
I’m sure you will do an ept job.
@@naftalibendavid That's such a heartful thing to say. You know how to gruntle a guy.
Growing up, my family liked playing with these kinds of words and using some of these lost positives. We'd jokingly say things to each other like, "That's nothing to feel gruntled about," or "Oh, couthen up!"
As a German with a CPE, I am truly delighted by your channel that I have discovered recently. Keep up your enlightening and also humourous work! It does help in general to have a multilingual background ;-) which English-speaking people often lack, regrettably. From my German perspective, I am often surprised that Middle English bears far more resemblance to German than Modern English - a fact perfectly known to you, of course.
Old English is much closer still grammatically its very similar
On the Whelm thing, the dictionary I have says “whelm” is water that washes across a boat’s deck. If it’s too much for the gunwale drains, you flounder, becoming overwhelmed and unable to cope.
There’s lyrics like “battered by the whelm” in several poems, so I just accepted this; you couldn’t sensibly be “battered” (a repetitive action) by being capsized (a singular thing unless you somehow master the barrel roll)
On the other hand, I've seen "whelmed over" and "whelmed under" used to describe sinking beneath the waves in both a literal and metaphorical sense.
@@Nerdsammich I’m not sure that proves or disproves that “whelm” is the water that gets over the gunwale. Those lyrics would make perfect sense based on both my and Rob’s dictionaries.
@@Mulletmanalive I wasn't trying to refute your claim, just mentioning another way I'd seen it used.
Whelmed has the same base as current Swedish Vålma, I'd imagine? Now limited to "turn hay(crop) to dry", i.e. reduce water.
@@karinspangberg5990 That sounds like my “wash over and run off” version. Cool. Is that pronounced similarly? I don’t know the vowel markers for Swedish.
My brain is saying “circle means open mouth” so it would be sort of a WALL-mah. I know it’s probably wrong but my inner child won’t shut up on the subject 😂
just like true becomes truth, and long becomes length, and grow becomes growth, rue becomes ruth. so even though we don't use "ruth" anymore, it's like the bridge between "rue" and "ruthless"
I will use the phrase I rue the day when..... but I often get blank stares in return.
The only time I've seen ruth used was by Tolkien in his poem about Beren and Luthien: "No ruth did feel the marshalled legions of his hate, on whom did wolf and raven wait."
One word common where I lived in west lancashire we used 'fettled'. As in 'ya fettled lass?' Are you ready girl?
And 'firtle' as in to firtle in your pocket or bag for your door key. Or that drawer full of useful things for an allen key or spare cash.
I don't know if it's an Australian thing or just my family thing, but "kempt" and "ruthful" are words that I've definitely heard people use and have used myself without finding it strange or out of place
Kempt yes, ruthful no. But it may depend on which part of Australia we’re from or which age group we’re in 😉
The way some English people are bad at speaking their own language (including yours truly), 'ruthful' could be mistaken for 'rueful.' And as 'rueful' means a feeling of remorse or sorrow, perhaps there's a long lost and historic connection between the two words?
Not Australian, but I'm Finnish but my mother's family spoke Swedish and my grandfather was bilingual with German on top. Most people in Finland speak Finnish and I mostly don't have Swedish speaking friends.
I'm quite often in a situation where I have no idea if some weird frase or word is an actual Swedish or possibly German word or a "family word".
I know my kids probably don't know how many words they use are our "family words" because me and their father are fond of word play and adopting some silly words the kids came up when they were little, so we have lots. Even I forget many words I use are nonsense to people. But some I intentionally want to infiltrate into common language, because they are great words!
Finnish is a weird language though and making up words that are still understandable to other finns is quite normal.
I regularly say "kempt" and "couth" so I guess it just depends.
I saw a video around the same topic 4 years ago by Nerdsync 'Young Justice Explained: why isn't anyone just "whelmed?"', which covered the topic in context of Robin's jokes in the 'Young Justice' TV show. Your video was great covering a broader context of such words.
Searched the comments to for any other viewers of Young Justice here and of course there are... consider me whelmed!
Definitely feeling the aster.
This kind of reminds me of Robin from the cartoon Young Justice, one of his lines early in the show is "Everyone is always overwhelmed or underwhelmed but nobody is ever just whelmed"
This is obviously Dick in Young Justice putting on an accent to make a video.
Top tip: if a neologism (new word) is used meaningfully, it's a word. Just consider how awesome this is: if you start using a word that people understand, there's a real chance it might be included in a dictionary and become popular some day. So use these!
frindle?
Neologism my beloved
Yep, with enough time, neologisms can become perfectly cromulent words.
nah, stand against marxism and all that.
'Furl' is a perfectly genuine word - it simply means to roll up; such as to furl a sail or flag.
Most modern sailing yachts have 'furlong headsail', in that they roll around the forestay instead of being removed and folded.
I was under the impression a furlong was 1/8 of a mile. I wonder how the two got linked?
@@CathodeRayKobold I think they made a typo, it should be "furling headsail"
You can find "furl" in older books. It was pretty common not that long ago.
I would still furl an umbrella today.
When I was in school (Australia) in the early 1960s, I had the job of "furling the flag", at the end of the day. That is, folding it up. The Oxford Dictionary has an entry referring to "furling headsail". The root of 'furling' appears to mean "to bind".
The lost positives are a clue to something else that has been lost. I wrote a whole book about that. Well done for picking up a thread that will unravel a lot more than just some words!
This is the one I've been waiting for. I am very very gruntled. Also I've dressed up for the occasion to make sure I'm as kempt as possible.
In the title of the last chapter of his novel “I, Robot”, Isaac Asimov reversed a common cliché into “The Evitable Conflict”.
Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger In a Strange Land” has a chapter (the first or maybe second) describing Valentine Michael Smith, titled “His Maculate Origin”.
An example of a “seamful” change of subject would be Monty Python’s “And now for something completely different”.
I have seen occasional references to "The Society for the Restoration of Lost Positives." I'd join. Also, are there any differences in use of lost positives between American and British English?
@@saintpaulsnail Sounds like a Monty Python-esque Society, like the Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things.
I think Asimov wrote a story called The Evitable Conflict. I remember reading something called that in my teens and I don't think it was just the last chapter of I Robot, though I've read that, so maybe I'm getting confused. 🤔
I love how he embraces the words and writes them rather naturally unto the script.
A nice example of a lost positive is the German (!) noun "Harm", which is the same in English, incidentally, which was still used by Goethe, but is not in use today. However, its negation, the adjective "harmlos" (harmless) is still with us - while both are of course still in use in the English language.
It is very similar in Swedish (where we have "harmlös"), though until very recently "harm" or "harmsen" was still used in an abstracted way: meaning the feeling of having been emotionally hurt.
I was thinking about lost positives in the German language while watching the video and I was so sure that we don't have that. But harmlos / harmvoll changed my mind! Nice discovery today :)
Harmvoll oder harmfoll gibt es nicht im Deutschen. Why?
@@thorstenjaspert9394 Genau, im Englischen gibt es harmful, aber harmvoll nicht. Das wird wohl auch irgendwann nicht mehr benutzt worden sein in der Bevölkerung und ist jetzt veraltet.
@@thorstenjaspert9394
Hab ich schon von Leuten gehört die soviel Englisch lesen und schreiben das sie anfangen deutsche und englische Wörter durcheinander zu werfen, klingt weniger seltsam als man meinen würde
I would argue that Susie Dent is wrong *morphologically* about "nocent" being a lost negative. It is the positive form of the pair; innocent is the negative. Semantically, "innocent" is more positive, in the sense that we regard innocence as being better than "nocence" (or guilt).
Remember "Primum non nocere", and innocent still has the meaning of "not harming", rather than "not guilty in a legal sense", in uses like 'an innocent insect', 'an innocent habit' and the like.
But "noncent" is the negative of "innocent"
Here negative meaning opposite. It's not whether the meaning is positive or negative. But rather that one of a pair of opposites is missing
@@BryanLu0 The point is that the base word is nocent and innocent is the negation produced with a generic prefix. Unfortunately "positive" and "negative" are somewhat ambigous, what they are referring to (syntax or semantic)
@@BryanLu0
The root form of an adjective is always considered “positive”, in that it describes the existence of an attribute, whereas its negation describes the absence of that attribute.
Agreed; obviously. Whoever this so-called expert is, she's lost all credibility for me immediately for making a mistake only an amateur could make.
Many years ago, I was visiting a friend and after general pleasantries were exchanged he said, "What's wrong? You seem disgruntled." But no, I was not and assured him that my gruntles were perfectly fine, thank you.
I find your response quite ert.
These orphaned negatives and positives have always (not noways…) bugged me… glad you did an episode on them!!
He is a language nerd, and seeks out topics that are likely to appeal to other language nerds.
This video made me feel much more combobulated after watching it.
My understanding of positive/negative in this context is the whether the prefix/suffix negates the attached word or not, rather than whether the word has good or bad connotations
4:45 Mr A. Macdonald out here writing fire memes 450 years before it was popular
Did anyone understand Suzie Dent’s explanation of a lost negative? It seems maculate and nocent are the positive forms of each word. Stained and guilty are negative connotations but they are a positive state. Anyone understand where she was going with this?
I agree with you. “Nocent” may have negative connotations and “innocent” positive ones, but the same is true for positive and negative results when testing for a disease!
Yeah I'm not a fan of thinking of positive as referring to the connotation of the word, rather than simply the word which was negated. One should argue instead to call it the "lost negatee" or "lost subtrahend" (yuck) or something, before considering using the term "false negative" where negative refers to connotation.
But, it's like if someone says "if negative x is 6, what is positive x?" and you argue, "no can do, no positive number has a negative that is positive". Like, grow up, we all know we're talking about +x = -(-x) = -6
Let's keep lost positive.
Tbh it was an odd remark and I think she may have been confused. A few people in the comments have disagreed with her on it.
@@liambishop9888 yeah, agreed, probably just an off the cuff remark that we are over nitpicking
I didn't get what she said. Imo, the negative form indicates the lack of the quality.
So interesting from a linguistic point of view to notice the divergent evolutionary processes undergone in different cultures. In your Germanic languages (English in your case), there appears to be some kind of "lost era" in the middle historical periods where languages seem to have drifted apart very early and very drastically from a common, ancestral root. In our Romance languages (Spanish in my case), the ingrained cultural weight of Latin is firmly and deeply rooted in our thinking and speech, rendering the "lost positives" concept virtually nonexistent, except for a few examples. Our negative/positive prefixes and suffixes to that matter are utterly logical and common-day use. Fascinating video as usual, Rob. Looking forward to your next collab with Susie Dent!!
The introduction of French into English in the aftermath of the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066 CE had a crucial impact on the formation of Middle and Modern English as explained in Baker, Curt (Spring 2016) "The Effects of the Norman Conquest on the English Language," Tenor of Our Times: Vol. 5, Article 5, excerpts of which I have quoted below for your convenience.
"The time of Roman rule in England is where historians begin to understand English language formation; from there forward a picture begins to form as researchers piece together the development of English. Different influences on the development of English include indigenous populations in England, Anglo-Saxon influence, and finally the Norman Conquest, which scholars consider a “defining moment in the development of the English language….” Although it is one of many factors in the evolution of English, the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and the resulting effects were crucial in the formation of the English
language.
An understanding of the complex nature of the English language requires a detailed study of the history of English in the time preceding the Norman Conquest. This consideration of the linguistic landscape begins during the time of Roman authority in England. Romans, invading from Italy, brought their own culture, traditions, and language when they conquered England. For reasons that will not be addressed in this paper, however, the Romans did not attempt to change the existing culture, traditions, and language like the Normans. Nonetheless, the period of Roman rule is significant to the study of the English language - historians find ample evidence during this time period for the existence of indigenous people groups and their own unique dialects in the time of Roman rule. Their presence, however, raises questions. Scholars have speculated that these seemingly indigenous peoples are actually of mainland-European descent.
This is evidenced in the Welsh, who likely descended from Spain. Similarly, the Britons living in the lowlands appear to have connections to Gaul. These native peoples spoke dialects reflective of their differing backgrounds, rendering it unlikely that a national, unifying language existed before the late tenth and early eleventh century AD.
Evidence for a central language is first apparent during the reign of King AEthelred around 1000 AD. During this time period there was an explosion of writing in Latin and Old English...This flurry of law codes and writings reflects a centralization and unification of language, arguably the first recorded in the history of English.
French entered this linguistic environment in 1066 as a result of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror. The duke of Normandy, William had a legitimate claim to the English throne as the distant cousin of Edward the Confessor, king of England. With the death of Edward in January 1066, Duke William immediately declared himself the heir to the English throne, asserting that Edward had chosen him as the successor...Upon the death of Edward, Harold denied the entirety of William’s claim and seized the throne. William promptly responded by invading England in September 1066, crushing Harold’s defenses and establishing himself as King of England on Christmas Day 1066...
He [King William] also rewrote law codes utilizing French vocabulary and loanwords that slightly altered legal procedure. With his coronation in 1066, King William officially established Anglo-French “…alongside the traditional Latin as the language of public state business and of the court.” The limited available records, solidifying that early law codes were written nearly entirely in French, confirm this...
These literary works - Domesday Book and law codes - helped cement French into English legal practice and, eventually, general speech.
Although significant, the influence of legal vocabulary on the English language pales in comparison to the impacts of social pressure from the upper French class and its effect on common speech. King William, largely through the giving of land, brought French nobles to England, forming an aristocracy of French-speakers. Initially, this upper-class failed to influence colloquial speech but rather made its impact on vocabulary through the elite caste as a result of the limited literacy rates in England at the time.
Nevertheless, as the official language of the state and the one spoken by society’s most prominent figures, it is not surprising that French loanwords began to make their way into the English lexicon in the period immediately following the Conquest. For instance, the French word trône appears for the first time, from which the English word throne is derived. Similarly, the word saint makes its debut, a Latin word brought to English by French. A relatively confined influence seems to be the limit of French on English immediately following the conquest; by 1250, however, the effect increased significantly.
Nearly 200 years after the conquest, French was sufficiently established in England and rapidly gaining popularity among the general public. As the primary language of the aristocratic portion of society and the law, French had a trickle-down effect on common speech, gradually becoming more attractive to commoners. This consistent presence of French sounds and words in routine conversation eventually led to general acceptance of formerly unnatural morphemes and expressions. As French became more prevalent and desirable among Englishmen, the amount of French words and units of language that came to be included in English speech and lexicon naturally increased. Additionally, entirely new words formed from combinations of existing French and English words. This development, known as derivational morphology, ushered in changes to English in sentence formation and vocabulary...
With increased French influence on common speech, formation of new words with French roots or affixes became common. For example, the word hindrance resulted from a combination of the Old English verb hinder and the French suffix -ance, used in the construction of nouns. Thus, the merging of an English verb and a French suffix formed a new word entirely. In addition, English words are occasionally formed entirely from French, as in the word coverage, a combination of the French word cover and the French suffix -age.
Although there are many examples of word formation according to this pattern, the derivational morphology of English is not limited to French plus English or vice versa. Latin also plays a role, evidenced in the word involvement, a Latin verb involve with the French suffix -ment, used in the construction of nouns. Another example of mixing languages is coveted, a Latin word brought to English as a French loanword. The addition of a native - originally Germanic - suffix -ed forms the adjective describing something highly desirable. Each of these morpheme combinations indicates a distinct French presence in the formation of English words following the Norman Conquest, evidencing the profound French impact on English.
Many people groups and native dialects have influenced English, including seemingly indigenous peoples with connections to various European demographics and foreign influences like the Romans, Angles, Saxons, and finally Normans. Nevertheless, the linguistic effects of Duke William of Normandy’s takeover of Britain mark that event as a crucial element in the formation of the English language."
I could say the same about my own native language, Portuguese. Words like "maculado", "inevitável", "inapto" are perfectly regular and common. However, we suffer the same with "inflamável" and "inepto".
It is not so much the Germanic languages in general that drifted apart that drastically from the ancestors. It is especially English that did it because it was conquered by the french speaking Normans. Just as an example in Standard German the positive of "ruthless" is not lost. There are the words "rücksichtslos" (ruthless) and "rücksichtsvoll" (considerate -> "ruthful"), where "Rücksicht" means "consideration". The "los" and "voll" postfixes have the same meanings as "less" and "ful" have in English. I don't know if "ruth" and "Rücksicht" are somehow related or have different roots. Still the video states that "ruth" meant "compassion" or "empathy" and this is very close to the meaning of "Rücksicht", so most likely there is a connection. That said, "Rücksicht" is not a single word, but a compound word of "Rück" (back) and "Sicht" (view). The word therefore gives a hint to the concept it describes, while in English the meaning of "ruth" was lost.
@@patrickm3981 _Rücksicht_ and _ruth_ are indeed etymologically unrelated. If they did exist, the etymological equivalents would be _*ridgesight_ and _*Reude_ respectively. Incidentally, _ridge_ and _Rücken_ give a fun example of how semantic drift causes languages to diverge: both derive from West Germanic _*hrugi_ meaning "spine" or "back", with the English word having moved towards the "spine" meaning, while the German one has moved towards the "back" meaning.
@@luminiferous1960 how did the romans influence english? certainly not directly as they ruled great britain before the angles, saxons and jutes started invading it. To be more precise, these germanic peoples first invading during the tail end of roman rule, but even then, direct roman influence on english is minimal, as far as i know. Also, saying the anglo saxons influenced is weird, as they were the ones who took english's root languages to great britain.
This is awesome. My brother and I have been doing this for years, and haven't limited our use cases to positives per se, any modifier is subject to scrutiny. Typical example: I was mayed to find that my co-worker is quite gruntled in spite of his proposal being jected. Some interesting doubles too, like does cretion = indiscretion? BTW one of my favorite Simpsons snippets features a doctor with a strong accent, who after causing an explosion excitedly exclaims "Inflammable means flammable? What a country!!"
Ah, thank you! Your verbal treatise left me thoroughly gustful and jected. Let the grateless hordes be turbed by your brilliant wisdom--I am combobulated, and that's perfect.
Ironically, the positive of dejected should be *surjected, which is confusingly also what the positive of subjected should be. Speaking of “subject”, the native Germanic parallel word is *underthrow, which it is doubtful if such a word has ever been in use in English.
Love this. Reminded me of the George Carlin bit.
_Then there are words we need. Words that don’t exist. "Chalant." We have "nonchalant," so the concept of chalance exists. What about "chalant"? "Nearfetched." Something very obvious. "Say, that’s nearfetched, Bill!"_
You beat me to it! I was going to say the same thing. 🙂
That's one way to germanify English
Given that Chalant is a family name, I've wondered if the word nonchalant came about because of some small-town drama; e.g. "Don't be like those busy-body, annoying Chalants." or something to that effect.
That was a far-call !
@@kmoecubno it comes from the old French “chaloir”
Thank you! I was pondering this subject the other day.
Was not sure how to describe it so my internet search of the subject came up dry.
A character in one of the Oz books used the word "gormish", saying "You are being gormish, and I detest gormishness!" It seemed, in context, to mean "you are disagreeing with me, and I don't like that!" My family has used it in that sense for more than fifty years. So while "gormful" may be an awkward word, "gormish" seems to me to be perfectly cromulent.
this embiggens my personal lexicon
That’s right! Thanks for the reminder.
@@hithere640 You've got me thinking again. Why must we enlarge a photo? Why can't we dislittle or unsmall it? For that matter, why can't we undarken or disbrighten it? It's not perative, just curious. Oh, is there a word for not curious?
Which book is this? I've read all the books through Baum, Thompson, Neill, and Snow and it's been a while. Sounds like Roquat, but I don't remember.
Three things. First I always wonder why these, then you. Second the Norwegian word for calm is rolig so wonder if there is a link to unruly and the calm in Norwegian. And lastly i really love your presentation and your obvious love of language, and because you truely find linguistics fascinating, you bring us in to your world so we too are fascinated. This is a gift thanks for sharing.
Unruly is surely from rule i.e. un-ruled i.e. lacking order, discipline but could be related to un-calm, maybe
Reminds me of that bit of rural wisdom from the pre-safety of automobiling: "Ruth and Johnny, Side by side, Went out for an auto ride. John hit a bump; Ruth hit the tree; And John kept driving Ruthlessly." Proud to be an English speaker no matter how inaptly.😊
I've always found it curious that words like "ruthless" and "nonchalant" have no opposites, but I didn't know "lost positives" are a thing! Now, I've not only learned a bunch of lost positives, but I also learned the word "gormless" as well.
Thanks for the information!
Another couple of words that come to mind which aren't really orphaned negatives (but sound like they could be from their common usage) are "nonplussed" and "dishevelled". I always like the idea that it could be possible for a person to be "plussed". 🙂
When I first learned 'dishevelled', my teacher always mispronounced it as "dis-shelved". This led me to think it was meant to describe something that looks like it has been swept off a shelf (which is not far off from its actual meaning of something messy or disorganized).
since people felt that nonplussed has to have a negative non-, like of un-interested and in-different, this has given way to the contronymic meaning of nonplussed: unsurprised.
dishevelled, according to merriam webster, comes from anglo-french deschevelé, which is "dis-" + "chevoil" (hair). so shevelled, if it existed, might mean the same thing as dishevelled? or maybe "hairy"?
Especially if he or she is looking shevelled.
Nonminussed
How “ept” of you to point these things out. My “gruntlement” level always soars when watching RobWords!
Surprised that couth is not used anymore, my mum and aunt used it all the time growing up always in place of posh or in good taste and I still say it today.
My mum used it a lot as well. But usually in the negative saying "you are so lacking in couth" to me 😂
I recall it being in the lyrics of the song "Westering Home". Someone is described as "couthy and kindly", so I suspect it lived on longer in Scotland.
@AliDave aha, that would make sense. My great grandparents were from Scotland. My mum's father was the first in the family to be born in Canada
Still used by some in the southern US.
@musingwithreba9667, My mother uses ‘couth’ that way, too, as do I on occasion. Neither my mother nor I use it to anyone’s face though. That would be offensive!
I can't believe you got to interview Susie Dent! That's how you know you've truly made it as a Word Nerd. I met her at one of her shows and she did a book signing after, so obviously I bought the copy I had from home and got her to sign it. She said she liked my name and I made a very funny joke about how I got it for my birthday...which I then had to repeat several times because the crowd was so noisy. I felt decidedly unfunny on the third or fourth time of having to say it louder than 50+ people.
I can visualize - and hear - your progressive embarrassment. Wonderful experience!
indeed
It is certainly a funny joke, but you are better off not referring to your own jokes as funny. Leave that to your audience to assess.
@@allendracabal0819 that was part of the joke in my retelling, but thank you for destroying my comment even further
@@rosehipowl No worries, but you did just fine all by yourself.
I was hoping this video would've combobulated me, but I was shocked to see "discombobulate" was not a subject.
1:55 Botanist here. We still use the "maculate" word in the Latin name epithets of some species. For example _Conium maculata_ (poison hemlock), named that because it has spots.
Thats botanical latin though which is universal and not restricted to english speaking countries
Nimen Gorm sounds like a great name for a D&D character!
‘Gormenghast’ which is similar to the surname you suggest already exists in fantasy fiction as the name of an earldom in a series of novels by Mervyn Peake.
I have been looking for the term "lost positive" for so long! I had a conversation with a friend ages ago about how some words are almost always used with a meaning altering prefix and never just a lone root. I had no idea how to research this concept because I just didn't know what one would would call this group of words. You've scratched an itch my brain that has been lingering there for literal years hahaha. Thanks for the video. Great stuff.
I was confused for a minute, thinking I had seen this before, but no, Name Explain covered some of these words just over a week ago in his video on orphaned words. Weird that you both had the same idea not too far apart in time
I googled Susie Dent and it seems one of the books that Rob mentioned was released just two months ago. They probably both read it and formed a video idea around it.
@@Nikolaj11I believe that Name Explain's video came from a Patreon supporter suggestion, so possibly that viewer got the idea from there and suggested it to Patrick, perhaps without mentioning the source of their inspiration.
@@psiphiorg Yeah, that'd make sense as well.
Seriously, my all-time favorite channel. Both the content and your delivery are an absolute delight. Thanks very much, Rob!
For my first video from this channel, you’ve got a new subscriber!
From 'inscrutable' I infer not only 'scrutable' but the verb 'scrute', as in: "He may have thought his intent well-disguised, but I scruted it nonetheless."
Related to 'scrutiny'? Inscrutable = can't be scrutinised.
@@chrisamies2141 Yes. "Scrute" is more fun than "scrutinise", though. :-)
the way you script these to hop so naturally from word to word is lovely
Kipling's line "Utterly whelmed was I / flung under horse and all" is a rare modern (well, century old) of the literal use of the base word.
(16:00) Name Explain made a video called Orphaned Words about this exact topic, so you're not first. But you did include more details which is good.
This isn't the only video on RUclips discussing lost positives. Funnily enough, earlier this day, I saw Name Explain's video from 8 days ago about the subject, though that video calls them orphaned negatives, and the video is called Orphaned Words.
Rob acknowledged both terms...
Yeah, I googled Susie Dent and it seems one of the books that Rob mentioned was released just two months ago. They probably both read it and formed a video idea around
This makes me think of the running gag in the Young Justice cartoon where Robin and Kid Flash made "Aster" the positive form of "Disaster" , and they did have a discussion on "why is everyone underwhelmed or overwhelmed? Why can't anyone just be 'whelmed' ?"
Had a conversation with my gardener t'other day; he asked me "disaster", no I replied, dataster. Beautiful blooms they were too.
I assumed that the origin of "disgruntled" came from "gruntle" being an old term for a pig's snout, and by colloquial inference the nose. Therefore "disgruntled" is to feel you've had your nose metaphorically cut off, ie. disrespected as in the archaic punishment of cutting someone's nose off.
Or the English expression To have your nose put out of joint, meaning to be offended by someone putting you back in your place.
So like dismembered.
@@ronald3836 And yet this is not undone when you are remembered. What a pity.
So a porkie grunts with its gruntle?
@@michellebyrom6551If you've had your nose put out of joint, you just might lose your religion too.
I love this. As a daily business communicator, I emphasize the power and clarity in stating the positive rather than the indirect inverse e.g. “I’m unsure about…” vs. “I’m not sure about…” 😊
You make a good point. Sometimes differences are subtle. A skeptical, untrusting person may be diligent and loyal. Hence, he is both faithless and faithful.
When translating a questionnaire, the client demanded explanation about the differnece between "don't agree" and "disagree"
@@thejoin4687 two different things. Disagree is to differ in opinion or belief. Don't agree is less committal. I may differ or have no opinion. It's much like "I don't think so" and "I think not", or "I don't like you" and "I dislike you." I don't like Nigerian food, but since I've never tasted it, I don't dislike it either.
@@bruceboettcher9977I think that's right in most cases; disagree is more likely to imply active rejection, whereas don't agree sounds more like an absence of a positive ensorsement. On the other hand, "don't agree" can also sound committal depending on the intonation. The questionnaire draft used a mix of both, but we were unclear if this was intentional.
@@thejoin4687 I agree with you completely. When I edit business documents, I often needed to go to the source and ask, "what do you mean?" Many writers don't make clear distinctions, hence the need for an editor 😊.
In my native language (Portuguese, Brazilian variant, but the Iberian variant is supposed to be the same in this regard) valuable and invaluable would have quite opposite meanings. Yet in English the latter means something even more valuable. That said, this is one of the most invaluable RobWords episode. I really mean it! English meaning, I mean.
Great video as usual. I am also surprised that couth is not used anymore as it does seem to be familiar to me. In a similar vein, it has always confused me that there only ever seems to be a good riddance. I can think of many bad riddances in my life.
Yep me and me old dad use couth regularly.
Couth is definitely still used where I live (Central New York). But these words only appear if people use them in books/web pages/articles so a lot of "laymen" uses go unrecorded. We also say something like "Well, that is just not couth" a lot. I guess we could say "well, that is uncouth" but that has too much of a royal air about it.
Couth feels familiar to me too, though I don't think I've used it in conversation.
It doesn't come up often but absolutely use couth and I'm still in my 20s
I was surprised by the suggestion 'Couth' isn't used anymore. I heard it a lot from my parents generation when they were passing judgement on friends, music etc. - and almost always in this context. More than once a friend told me their mother had pronounced me 'couth', i.e. they didn't object to my being invited back to the house. If something was couth, like a record or a jacket, it was allowed to be shown to the grandparents.
I literally was talking about this to my mom and finding out some false lost positives vs real ones this past week. Its so hilarious that this came out right after that.
And to think I was ressurecting history by writing into one of my novels "but the inevitable was clearly evitable, for it never actually came" :'D
Resurrecting..... 🤭
Your content just gets better and better along with your presentation skills and editing. I have long known that the "dis" in "disgrunted" was merely emphatic, but had never considered just how many other examples of lost positives and false negatives there might be. As well, connecting the modern English to Middle, Old, Norse, French, German, Latin all serve to reinforce this amazing capability we humans possess for what is termed "speech." Great work, and a valuable source of understanding the human heritage.
Rob this is a truly wonderful channel with polished videos that never disappoint! Thank you for making them.
A verse from a widely-sung hymn has the word 'whelming' in it:
His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
Lots of fun and informative, as usual. I am not sure I was "gruntled" but I'm sure none of us was DISgruntled with your explanations here! Cheers!
I am adequately whelmed.
Great video. I don't think "gormless" is a word - at least not a well-known one - on this side of the pond.
It appeared in Britain in the 18th century, after the great mitosis.
@@AdrianColley heh interesting choice of word (I know what it means)
Rob, you are not only full of wonderful facts about words, but you’re funny with it. I really, really enjoy your videos. Keep ‘em coming!
Your videos are precious. I am pretty sorry this technology didn't exist when I first started learning English some 30+ years ago. Thank you for creating interesting and intelligently prepared scripts for your work. My wife and I highly appreciate them!
Theres a kids tv show where one of the villains gets upset because something that isn't ironic is "completely ronic"
I saw that episode 12 years ago, and could not tell you one other line or what characters were featured or what the plot was outside of the general plot structure of the show.
He blew my mind so hard. It was the first time I realized that we had lost positive words, and i never had any language to explore it.
I needed this video so bad.
I have needed this video for 12 years.
Phineas and Ferb
That sounds word for word like a running joke in the show Phineas and Ferb, where Dr. Doofenshmirtz would react to the appearance of his nemesis with, in the first instance
"How unexpected. . . And by that I mean COMPLETELY EXPECTED!" before trapping said nemesis. This became a running joke when in later instances he started using different adjectives, like "completely canny!" which led to him using lost/false opposing equivalents, like "completely ironic" or "completely peccable."
@@StarLightShadows it was phineas and ferb, but thats the only time it stuck with me.
Irony is latin though right? It not a negative either
Always good to find another Wodehouse fan. Given his way with words, I shouldn't really be surprised that you appreciate him.
That was a very gormful look. Thank you for this. I have been awaiting this video awhile. My wife and I have discussed whether or not one can be ruthful. Now we know, and I feel good in telling her she's full of ruth. (Maybe she'll stop asking me, "Who's Ruth?")
Gorm (the old) is the name of a danish king from the viking age.
He's the father of Harald Bluetooth, and the oldest confirmed king in the danish royal family.
I've seen the phrase written in older texts about someone "being without ruth and without pity". Maybe I'm becoming a fossil, but I find it sad that language seems to devolve vs. evolving. My own children's vocabulary is sadly lacking, and my son was an honors English teacher! Oy! (which is a word that should be inducted into English!).
I love this! It fits right in to my own tendency to question such words and similar issues with words that are not "lost positives," but seeming contradictions.
For instance, "tired" has not exactly the same sense as "retired." If you are tired, you have exhausted yourself; if you are retired, you have reached the age at which you cease gainful employment. You may or may not be tired at that point, but it does not mean "tired again." Nor does it mean to install new tires on your vehicle (American English spelling).
And what about "amulatory" and "ambulance?" Someone who is ambulatory is able to walk; someone needing a ride in an ambulance likely is not able to be ambulatory. Sounds like the same root, so what gives?
If you are "incapacitated," can you then become "capacitated?" If we have "inalienable" rights, do we then also have "alienable" ones? Or would that mean the aliens have arrived?
And why are there so many prefixes that mean the negative? (In, un, non, de, dis: inattentive; unappreciated, nonsense, degreased; disappointed)...??? But wait a minute! Disappointed has nothing to do with being appointed!
Then there are words with which such prefixes are not used: enjoy or don't enjoy, but not "disenjoy: or "unenjoy!" And thanks for including "disgruntled." I've often posited that same question!
I could go on and on....so I truly enjoy these types of videos. I hope to see some of these addressed in a future post! 🙂
That's probably a coincidence, because 'retired' comes from latin re- (as again) and 'traere' (to pull), via french 'retirer' which means... to remove, to leave.
"Tired" from a quick search is old english for 'to end'.
there are alienable rights, they are the rights that can be made alien to you (i.e. separated from you), for example the right to drive a car can be removed after too many traffic violations
In- and un- have Germanic roots, de- and dis- come from Latin, and non- has both Germanic and French etymology. English just takes a bit of something from everywhere
The ambulatory status of the vehicle and the person are unrelated. There is no contradiction if the vehicle is able to move and the person is not.
Also, ambulance is short for ambulance cart (the shortening happened before cars existed), which took casualties to the ambulance (field hospital), named for its ability to move with the army.
Disenjoy is a word.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of words that have kept their antithetical word, but where the meanings have drifted so that they are no longer opposites. One example that comes to mind is "graceful" and "graceless", the former being, at least usually, describing physical activity, while the latter is usually a description of social behaviour.
This episode was so much fun. I would've loved it even more if you'd spread it over two or three episodes and given more detail on the word origins. That's the best part. :)
Great subject, our family used to crack each other up with these, love them!
I remember reading "underwhelmed" for the first time in a blog back in 2003 and thought it was incredibly witty. Now it's used all the time. I'm also pretty sure "so" used as an intensifier with 'hungry' is fairly new too. In the early 90s seems to be the first time I heard people say they were "so hungry".
The Sloan song from the 1990’s was the first I encountered it. The lyrics start: “I was underwhelmed, if that’s a word.”
@@rebeccawinter472 This is weird. I was just thinking about this comment last night when I realized it wasn't "so hungry" where so as an intensifier was new. It was in phrases like "I'm so looking forward to that".
I wasso happy to see couth on this list. Uncouth was one of my mother's favorite words, often used to gently and humorously chide my father's table manners, while warning us kids not to follow in his ill-mannered footsteps. It madame often wonder if it was ok to be couth, since it seemed so important to her that we not be UNcouth. 😂
I absolutely love your content! So much great, fun information told in a lovely way. I always look forward to your videos.❤
So appreciate someone as nerdy as I. I have masters in English, French literature (especially old/middle French) and European history. Keep it up. You sound like you enjoy teaching...I'm retired from that profession.
I love your videos, especially on the peculiarities of spelling.
Also I really enjoyed your videos on reading/understanding French without French knowledge, simply by replacing some letters.
Could you please make a similar video on Spanish?
My family have to go to Mexico in 6 months and live there for 2+ years.
Such a video would be a life saver 🙏🏻😃
Feckless & gormless seem to be used together often in my experience, perhaps surprisingly lol
Wish I had a better comment for this one, Rob & friends, but I gotta like, share, comment 😂
I'm sure you have plenty of feck!
@@RobWords Snort! LOLOL.
I loved this video and its one of those rare times I liked and subscribed to a channel.
Hooray! Thanks
Although they have negative connotations, to say that something is 'nocent' or 'maculate' is a positive assertion of a fact. I would say the wonderful Ms Dent is wrong in this case; the function of the word is what counts here, and using 'negative' in the sense of a connotation as opposed to the quality of an assertion is mistaken.
Indeed. It’s like positive and negative results when testing for a disease-you usually don’t consider a positive result a positive event!
As an addition to your questionning about "nonchalant", in Quebec french, we use the word "achalant" for someone/something annoying... 😉
Edit: After carefully researching the origin, it seems that the modern form is actually issued from the old french "chaloir" ("chaleur" or heat) that comes from the latin word calere. It is still an intetesting question as to why "heat" became a synonym of annoying...
Well I can't speak to the reason historically, it makes perfect sens to me as a Louisianian. The heat is mighty achalant here. Likewise, if the heat itself weren't, the sounds that usually accompany it from the frogs can get a bit annoying and if nothing else, if someone's getting your blood pressure up they're probably making you feel a bit hot.
@@Soitisisit 🤣😉🤣 thanks for the info, I'll put that on my bucket list. In what parrish are you located more precisely if I may ask ?
@@jean-clauderainville677 Winn, but I spent most of my adulthood in Lafayette parish and that's what I'd recommend. Parts of Baton Rouge are also worth it and if you're going for Mardi Gras and can stand the crowds, there's New Orleans. Even off the festival season, New Orleans is good for a one-off visit, especially for the Audubon Zoo and the battleship that was turned into a floating museum. Just be prepared to see some jarring income inequality, especially in Baton Rouge because of how close the low-income and run down part of town is to the university which is borderline pristine. New Orleans at least has more of a gradient.
Perhaps related to "boiling the blood", or similar? Feeling that warm enrage.
Achalant sounds like a kind of unpleasant heat, which would make sense considering that the "a" prefix is often used to describe a lack of something or a negation of something.
To me at least it would make perfect sense to call something nonchalant as unbothersome (is that even a word actually?) and something achalant as, well, bothersome, if we follow that same logic.
Actually, "chalant" is (or was since that verb isn't used much nowadays) the past participle of the verb "chaloir." It became an adjective (this is very common in French) and then the final "t" became a "d." So it is "chaland" in modern French and it means "client of a shop." We also have the word "achalandé" to talk about a buzy shop.
From the same etymology we have the word "achalant" which means "something or someone that is annoying."
Love it! 🥰 Our fellow, @freelegal est vraiment achalant 🤭
This is cool on another level. I've been researching inserted letters in words when word sound shift happens.
Because chalant is a past participle, my research suggested that it originally was something like "chalat" or "chalad" with the -t or -d being added to denote a final action.
But since the "a" vowel is located in the upper back part of the mouth, and the t/d are located in the front of the mouth, in fast speech the mouth slides past the "n" sound. And eventually, when things get written down, people hear the n, so it gets inserted into the spelling.
I have found many instances of this in Germanic words, and English words coming from Germanic; but since I'm less familiar with French, this is one of the few I've seen.
Thank you for the help in my research!
There's a town nearby named Kemptville in eastern Ontario. When you mentioned Kempt discussing false positives, I was hoping that kempt and unkempt used to be synonymous. The town was named after a colonial British Governor General so the name had nothing to do with the appearence of the town, but it would give me a snicker driving past.
Said B.G.G. was well combed, I assume?