Gruntled and embowelled
The phenomenon of lonely negatives is effable
There is such a thing as too much couth.
S.J. Perelman
As a human being reasonably contented with my lot, am I gruntled? Nobody has yet succeeded in eviscerating me either, so does that mean that I’m embowelled? I do have the full quota of intestines and would be gutted to lose them. English is full of lonely negatives like disgruntled, disappointed and disembowelled, and rather than being untoward with you by leaving you nonplussed about the nature of this phenomenon, I’ll be reckful and toward so you can be plussed (or at least nonminused) and let’s hope you’re combobulated and appointed at the end of this post!
The most common reason for the existence of lonely negatives is that we’ve only taken one half of a pair from a donor language. This may be because the donor language itself only has a negative form or because the other half of the pair was deemed surplus to requirements – borrowed but swiftly falling into disuse, or simply never borrowed at all. Some of these words are more obviously negatives than others. For example, we have dishevelled and dishabille (or deshabille), where dishevelled is a loanword from Old French deschevelé – (des- ‘apart’ + chevel ‘hair’) ‘bare-headed, shaven-headed’ and then ‘with disordered hair’ before acquiring the more general sense of ‘untidy, with disordered clothes’, while dishabille ‘partially or disorderly dressed’ is from French déshabillé ‘undressed’, but the positive root habiller ‘to clothe’ didn’t make the language switch. Similarly, the following in- words have transparently negative prefixes: incorrigible, originally used in English with the sense ‘incurable’ with reference to disease < Old French incorrigible and Latin incorrigibilis (in- ‘not’ + corrigibilis ‘possible to correct’), indomitable ‘not possible to be tamed’ < Latin indomitabilis ‘untameable’ (in- + domito ‘tame’), inscrutable ‘impossible to comprehend’ < Latin inscrutabilis (in- + scruto ‘examine’) and ineffable ‘beyond expression’ < Old French ineffable and Latin ineffabilis ‘unutterable’ (in- + effabilis ‘speakable’). The latter borrowing also provides an example of the ridiculous level of pearl-clutching in Victorian England, where ineffables was a euphemism for ‘trousers’, a taboo and socially risqué word at the time.
Other loanwords that turn out to be lonely negatives are a bit more camouflaged. The dis- of disgust and dissemble may not be transparently negative, but these words were previously negative forms. A derived form from Latin gustus ‘a tasting’ was produced in Old French desgouster ‘have a distaste for’. While Modern French has goûter ‘taste, appreciate’, the English can’t be gusted by a delicious dish. Dissemble ‘mask your real feelings’ has shifted semantically from its base meaning of ‘make unlike, make dissimilar’ present in Old French dissembler and its Latin source dissimulare, but again, we can’t semble and be frank about what we feel. Nonchalant ‘deliberately unconcerned, casual’ is another loanword from Old French, where only the negative was borrowed – positive derivatives from the root word chaloir ‘bother, concern’ not catching on. The in- of innocent and innocuous is also a negative prefix added to derivatives of Latin nocere ‘to hurt, injure’. Although we may not be nocent if we’re guilty or nocuous if we’re harmful, both of these forms used to exist in Early Modern English along with more familiar borrowings from this Latin root, such as noxious and obnoxious.
Sometimes, words with a negative affix survive when opposite forms or root words have become obsolete. Hence, with reckless, feckless, gormless and ruthless, Old English rece ‘care, heed’, and the Middle English forms feck ‘energy, vigour’, gome ‘attention, wit’ and ruth ‘compassion’ have not survived, although Scots has feckful ‘effective, vigorous’ and there are rare attestations of reckful ‘carefully attentive’, gormful ‘sensible’ and ruthful ‘compassionate’, though usually for humorous effect. Similarly, the lonely negatives ungainly, unruly, unscathed, unstinting and unwieldy no longer have corresponding positive forms as gainly ‘graceful’, ruly ‘disciplined, observant of order’, scathed ‘injured’, stinting ‘unduly limiting supply’ and wieldy ‘easily handled’ have died out, except in some dialectal use. Occasionally, long-obsolete positive forms are reintroduced through back-formation when the negative prefixes are removed. For example, couth and kempt have come back into general use. Old English cuð originally meant ‘known, familiar’, while its antonym uncuð meant ‘unknown’, before evolving through ‘unfamiliar’, ‘strange’, ‘awkward’ and ‘clumsy’ to ‘uncultured’, at which point couth was reintroduced as ‘cultured, well-mannered’. Kemb was an Old English parallel form of comb, so unkempt meant ‘uncombed’ before its meaning broadened to ‘scruffy’. While unkempt and well-kempt remained in the language, kempt ‘tidy’ is a recent back-formation.
To get back to gruntled, it is the past participle of gruntle ‘make a little grunt’ and ‘grumble, complain’, so the dis- of disgruntled is not actually a negative prefix, but an intensifier, meaning ‘utterly, completely’ – in this sense ‘utterly out of sorts, very ill-humoured’, so if, to take a purely hypothetical example, you are gruntled by your 1% annual bonus from a company which has just made record profits, you’re just a bit less irked than your disgruntled colleagues. Embowelled is a little more complex, as it used to mean both ‘embed deeply’ and ‘eviscerate’. However, it is thought that the dis- of disembowelled is also an intensifier – basically, if someone embowels you, you still lose your guts, but perhaps a little less robustly. So, to answer the questions in the introductory paragraph, if you’re gruntled and embowelled, you’re unlikely to be a hugely happy chappie and much more likely to be bemoaning the fact that you’ve had your intestines yanked out. Hopefully, this post has given you food for thought, but let’s face it, my musings are liable to make you defatigable and any memory you retain of such whimsy will probably be delible!