Reckful. We still have "reckoning" and "reckless." Pretty sure it actually showed up in some dictionary, but certainly nobody uses it. A different word origin from "wreck" (derived from shipwrecks), "reck" is apparently old English for thoughtful awareness. "Reckful driving" would honestly be a hilariously counterintuitive phrase!
It's actually more complicated in German: instead of whelmed and overwhelmed, you have "bewältigt" and "überwältigt", but you have no "wältigen" as a single morphem - it HAS to be "bewältigen".
Irritate is not a orphaned negative. It comes from Latin’s iratus. Also for y’all learning Spanish and don’t understand what gustar really means, the negative is disgustar. Look familiar? It should because it’s disgust. So gustar is gust (gusto). Gustare in Latin means to taste, so gustar means to appeal to one’s sense of taste/preferences. The food disgust me. I don’t like the food. The food me gusta (gusts me). I like the food.
Couth is a word I use on a semi frequent basis. I still use it as a negative and positive. “That man has a lot of couth.” Usually meaning “class, manners, and honor” all rolled into one. I also say “He has no couth!!” Meaning someone who has no class, manners, or honor.”
In the north of England someone who is considered to have a coarse disposition or uses coarse language is often described as having "nae couth" or (up here in the north east) "nee couth" . I think it's a great word.
@@aleisterpook1730 Northern English has some influence with Scots (derived from Old/Middle English), which will have preserved many features of those versions of the language. Hence it retaining the word couth.
@@CAMacKenzie If the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) with their evil slavery had won the US Civil War then internationally we Americans might be called Dixies. Fortunately, the C.S.A. lost so the international slang for someone from the U.S.A. is Yank not Dixie.
Many of these affixless versions of orphans actually exist, but are obsolete or archaic. Whelm is one of these, and means the same as overwhelm. Noxious is the opposite of innocuous, both from Lat nocere, to harm.
I think it's worth pointing out that some words do have close relative opposites that simply have a slightly different form. The simplest one I always think of is inept => apt. However, your video had me thinking about innocuous and how innocuous without the prefix is similar to noxious which happens to have the opposite meaning. So, I dug into the etymology, and it appears that inocuus and noxius both existed in Latin, and both derived from nocere (to harm), so that they were, in the time of the Romans, much like inept and apt are to us today. Thankfully, they have both survived. We're just further away from the time when their relationship would have been less perplexing.
I was thinking similarly. A fair amount of parent words likely appear unrelated due to how flexible spellings were prior to dictionary codification. Apt and Inept look unrelated because ept was spelled and pronounced apt when the words were codified. Other orphaned words might be because the analogy they were built off fell out of use. Disgruntled is "orphaned" because a happy grunting pig might have once been described as "gruntling." I bet most people can imagine a pig gruntled about finding a truffle. Also Innocuous and Noxious have at least one more sibling: Innocent. All are likely french loan words born from Nocere.
That's not true. Irritated came from irritatus which came from Proto-Italic *enratos. Iratus came from the noun ira, meaning anger or wrath. They look similar, but they're not the same.
Fun fact: In Polish, the word "nienawidzić" (meaning: to hate) is actually an orphaned negative. It's derived from the prefix nie- (that negates the meaning of the stem) and the word "nawidzić". The word "nawidzić" last existed in Old Polish, but the negated form still exists in Modern Polish.
Doesn't "nawidzić" mean to see? So, together, "nienawidzę cię" would in literal sense mean "I won't see you a lot"? In nienawidzę, which is a present tense word that actually looks like a future tense word, "widzę" is identical to the word for "I see". And in Polish, the prefix 'na' often indicates future tense, as well as the amount or proportion of that thing. E.g 'jem' is 'I eat', but 'najem [się]' means 'I will eat (and become satisfied). And since 'no' is 'nie', 'nie najem się' means 'I won't eat enough to become satisfied'. So 'nienawidzę cię', read as 'nie nawidzę cię' would mean 'I won't see you a lot' or 'I won't see you sufficiently'. So, originally, when you said this to someone, you were subtly telling them that you hate them, by saying that you don't want to spend time with them, that you want to avoid them. Same for the inanimate 'nienawidzę tego'. 'I hate that', 'I won't see a lot of that' - implying that you want to avoid that "thing".
@@DogDogGodFog You Polish? No it fucking does not mean "to see", to see is "widzieć". You Yankee blockheads have the audacity to tell me what the correct word is? Pathetic. In modern Polish, "nawidzić" isn't a word.
The prefix in “Twilight” reminds me of the end of “Betwixt” (an archaic form of between). So, it sort of makes sense for the time between light and no light is called “between-light”
If I apply Grimm's Law to twi- or twice I am ending up with Zwie- or zwei in German. There is Zwielicht (two sources of light, twilight), Zwieback (twice baked, biscuit) or Zwietracht (two opposing opinions in a group, Discord).
If I'm not mistaken, that's not a coincidence. "Tw" is often related to pairs, halves and the number two (hence the random "w" in "two"). Between, betwixt, twilight, twain, two, twin, etc.
the German «Weise» is pronounced roughly like "visor" is in your accent. as for examples of orphaned words in German: «harmlos» means, well, "harmless" - but the word «Harm» is at best extremely archaic in German and will probably only understood intuitively by people who are familiar with the English word; also we do not have an equivalent to "harmful" (as in, we use different words for that) another example is that «vergessen» means "to forget" but we have no cognate of "get" alone; «-gessen» also appears in the past participle of «essen» ("to eat") but that is afaik etymologically unrelated and just there bc «gegessen» sounds better than -«geessen»- also i think "untoward" isn't "un-" + "toward" but "unto" + "-ward" which means the "un-" isn't even a negative but a variant of "on"
Orphaned negatives brought me back to the word *negative* which I believe is a false orphaned negative onto itself. At least in the Croatian version of it. In Croatian, ''ne'' means ''no'', and negatives are most often formed with the prefix of ''ne''. ''Nedovoljan'' means ''infufficient'', and ''dovoljan'' means ''sufficient''. ''Nespretan'' means ''clumsy'', and ''spretan'' means ''agile''. Thus, in Croatian, it might appear that the very word ''negativan'' (negative) has a pair of ''gativan'', meaning something like ''positive'' or ''happy''. However... ''gativan'' doesn't exist and never existed, because ''ne'' in ''negativan'' isn't a prefix, but a foreign word adapted into the language. I wonder how many more examples like that various languages have. But we actually *do* have a couple of orphaned negatives of our own with the prefix of ''ne''. There is a word ''nestašan'', which means ''mischivieous'', and is usually used for kids (and sometimes adults) who are mildly misbehaving, but still in a somewhat charming and harmless way. Using the logic I mentioned above, one would assume that ''stašan'' means something like ''calm'' or ''well-behaved'', but no... ''stašan'' doesn't mean anything, and based on everything I know, it never did.
Polish niedźwiedź (bear), nietoperz (bat) - dźwiedź*, toperz*. Nie- in niedźwiedź is not the negation prefix "nie-", but instead the whole syllable "niedź-" is a corruption of "miedź-", old Polish for honey. Early in Common Slavic the original word for bear became taboo, and it was replaced by a circumlocution that means "honey knower" (or to use English cognates, "meadwise"). If it were coined in modern Polish, it would take the form "miodowiad". In modern Polish, honey is "miód", and "miedź" means copper (etymology disputed). Nietoperz splits as nieto-perz, or "night feather" (both bits cognate with English). If it were coined in modern Polish, it would take the form "nocopiór".
I remember a joke from Caddicarus, where Caddy says he feels the opposite of "disgruntled", then follows it and a pause with "I'm... 'gruntled'." One of my favorite grammar-related jokes from his videos.
The existence of the words "happy", "merry" and "jolly" implies the existence of the words "happ", "merr" and "joll" - at least we know that "joll" is ultimately derived from the French "jolie" but what about "happ"?
You know, I always wondered why 'uncouth' existed when 'couth' isn't a word in of itself. It was the only orphan negative that I noticed. This video made me feel very gruntled!
It was a word if you go back to early Modern English and beyond. In Old English, "cuþ" (pronounced fairly similarly to the modern word) meant "familiar", so "uncuþ" meant "unfamiliar" (this changed later to mean "unrefined, rough"). They're actually related to Old English "cunnan", the ancestor of "can/could", which could mean either "to know something personally (a place, skill, person, etc.)" or "to know how to do something" at the time. There was also "seldcuþ" ("strange, weird"), with a prefix related to "seldom", which I wish we still had.
If you count anyone who has lost both parents _at any age_ as an orphan, then most of us become orphans eventually - I'm 72, but not yet orphaned (Hi, Dad!)
I assume the technical meaning is losing your parents as your caretakers and being taken care by other people. So moving out from your parents to live on your own doesn't count. Being a legal adult probably also invalidates being an orphan even if today's world that doesn't guarantee you being able to take care of yourself.
Technically; Bruce Wayne/Batman is an orphan due to the murder of his parents when he was a child, leaving him in the care of Alfred the Butler. Similar with Peter Parker/Spider-Man whose parents were spies that died on a mission whilst he was a child, leaving him in the care of Uncle Ben & Aunt May.
I've always wondered if the same process happened with some current words with the less suffix such as gormless, ruthless, listless and feckless as we don't have the words gorm,ruth,list and feck with the same definitions any more.
Listless is related to the German word “Lustlos”, and Lust in German is more like a general desire. One could have “Lust nach irgendetwas” or “desire towards anything”
Listless. From "liste", Middle English word meaning "pleasure, joy, delight" Gormless a British dialectal word, from gome "notice, understanding" (c. 1200), and from Old Norse gaumr "care, heed" Ruthless Ruth means to show pitty or compassion (among other things) Ruth is itself split from rue and the -th suffix. Rue (verb) =to make someone sorry / regretful. -th suffix = forming nouns from verbs or adjectives. Specifically, nouns with a qualitative meaning. Such as "growth" (n) from "grow"(v), or "depth"(n) from "deep"(adj) Feckless From 1590s. Scottish shortened form of effect + less. Effect is from 13 century. Old French efet.
It seems that Finnish is not the only Fenno-Ugrian language that has taken on that word of Indo-European origins as the word 'árva', which is clearly in the same vein as 'orpo', in Hungarian means 'orphan' and it features in the lyrics of one of the songs at my TH-cam channel, Beáta Karda's 'Jöjj, és fogd a kezem' ('Come And Hold My Hand'). I do wonder if there's an 'N-dropping' thing going on in Fenno-Ugrian languages when they borrow a word from an Indo-European source, like 'árvan' becomes 'árva' and 'orpon' becomes 'orpo', as when one inserts an 'N' in 'fogd' one gets 'fongd', which reminds me an awful lot of the German verb 'fangen', 'to seize', as in also 'to hold'.
Probably a bit before your time Patrick, but there was a very popular British comedian called Frankie Howerd who was fond of saying when he was surprised about something; 'My flabber has never been so ghasted!' Always made us laugh as kids in the 1970s. Not quite the same, but related, I think.
In Spanish, the word "nudo", meaning "naked", always has the prefix "des-", because the other word "nudo" means "knot". They are distinct in Latin (nūdus, nōdus) and French (nu, nœud), so if you say «disnu» or «dénu» in French it sounds funny.
"Dénudé" does exist in French, it means "undressed/disrobed/no longer clothed". I just looked it up and apparently it's from Latin "denudare", composed of "nūdus" like you said and the prefix "de" (which just means some action is fully and intensely completed, for example it's easy for English speakers to see it in the verb "declare": de + clear = "MAKE oneself clear").
The DC animated series 'Young Justice' plays around with these a lot. I think it started in an episode where Robin was talking about how people can be underwhelmed and overwhelmed, but not just whelmed. After that, the team starts using the words whelming and whelmed, every chance they get.
Just as English has “noxious” Italian has “nocivo” those are clearly the opposite of innocuous deriving from the Latin verb “nocere”. They just have a slightly different spelling to be obvious antonyms but they are.
Other examples of words that use the dis- prefix as an intensifier (or which came from an intensifier) and not a negative are disturb, distend, and discussion. A cool one is dispose, which has two main meanings (among several other related ones): to get rid of, or to be brought to do something (as in "this medicine disposes me to sleep"). It could be analyzed as a negation of "pose" from Latin meaning put (like I "un-put" something or get rid of it), or an intensifier of putting something somewhere. So even though the prefix has two, essentially opposite meanings, they both come from the same Latin source.
So, “presume” means to suppose before knowing, that means that “sume” would mean to know and “postsume” would mean to draw wider conclusions after knowing
Actually chalant is a word in the dictionary - listed as the opposite of nonchalant… And I would put the origin of disgruntled in the same category as inflammable - as likely related to extracting a “grunt”. Innocuous does have a related opposite - noxious, it just as a variant spelling.
Inflammable has never made sense to me because it means the same as flammable (easily catches fire). The "in" part is not changing the word to mean not flammable.
Thanks for the Cranberry morphemes explanation. "Cran" is an outdated term for "Crane", just like "cobweb" the "cob" is an outdated term for "spider." In "coleslaw", "cole" means "cabbage" And don't forget the "pea" in "peacock" and "peahen." With KFC, the reason it's officially NOT Kentucky Fried Chicken is because the Commonwealth of Kentucky started demanding royalties for use of "Kentucky." So the company offficially became KFC. In Quebec, where it was "Pulet Frit Kentucky", it's now just "PFK"
I have a secondary interpretation of "Untoward" Instead of assuming it being an affixed "toward" perhaps it is more of a compound word of unto and ward. Unto being, well, "on to" and ward being in direction of.
IR in IRRITATED is not a prefix. Source: I speak portuguese, and we have the verb "Irritar" meaning 'to bother'/'to cause one to be angry' (well, 'to irritate') So the IR part of the word it's from the same Latin radical
I’ve always found the word ‘evitable’ (meaning can be prevented) interesting. It is such an uncommon word that most people probably haven’t heard of it, whereas ‘inevitable’ is an everyday word. Not sure if it counts as an orphaned negative, but I find it interesting.
We do also have some orphan negatives in French. One that comes to mind is "inquiet" meaning 'worried'. Here if we remove the 'in' which usually negates word we get "quiet" which is not a word in French. The best part is when we take the noun form, it is no longer an orphan negative! "Inquiétude" means 'a state of being worried' while "quiétude" does mean 'a state of peace of mind', but it is seldom used and is considered as an old way to speak/write. I believe it is the same with "quiet", where it used to be an adjective meaning 'not worried' but that has been completely stopped being used, I think it is also the etymology of the English 'quiet' meaning not emitting noise, being peaceful. I find it funny how French kept one half while English kept the other half.
@@Liggliluff I mean the origin is very interesting, in Latin, 'quietus' meant something like "at peace". French took it as "at peace of mind" while English took it as "calm, not making noise"
Really entertaining video! 😊 One of my favourite orphaned negatives is impromptu, meaning unplanned. This video definitely had an air of promptu about it! 😂 Thanks, Patrick! 😊
He did make the point that there has been a conscious effort on the part of several writers to revivify these dead parent words, and this has been somewhat successful in the case of whelm.
@@DadgeCity yea but even if there wasn't a small movement to do that, i would still make that argument. i feel like most people would understand many of those words due to their familiarity with their counterparts and with context.
I’m a pilot and one of our standard emergency procedures is for “Inadvertent IMC” (IMC is Instrument Meteorological Conditions, when you can’t see outside the plane and have to rely on instruments). After memorizing the procedure and thinking about it a while it occurred to me that the word Inadvertent would imply the existence of the word Advertant, which I nor anyone else I worked with had ever been aware of before. It apparently does exist, having looked it up later, but it is so much less commonly used that it might as well not exist anymore.
Swedish has a lot of these. The Swedish word for word is "ord", and the un- prefix is o-, so these "unwords" are "oord". But there's the thing about removing the prefix and getting something that should be the opposite when it isn't. These are "ununwords", or "ooord' (pronounced with three distinct o). Some words: oförskämd (unashamed) - förskämd (corrupted/ruined/spoiled) odjur (beast/monster) - djur (animal) oskuld (virgin) - skuld (debt) olycka (accident) - lycka (fortune/luck) ovett (reproach/blame) - vett (behave/civilised) oväder (bad weather) - väder (weather) oljud (noise) - ljud (sound) otäck (unpleasant/frightening) - täck (to cover) otymplig (unwieldy) - tymplig (---) ofantlig (immense) - fantlig (---) odåga (rascal) - dåga (---) ohyra (pest) - hyra (rent) olympiska spelen (olympic games) - lympiska spelen (---) orolig (worried) - rolig (funny) You can probably see how they came to be by logic. Bad weather is "umweather", a beast is an "unanimal", and such. But they've changed meaning over time. Some actually comes from opposite where "täck" meant beautiful and nice, but it's not used today.
I only just started this video - I'm into linguistics and etymology - but just for the shoutout to people who became orphans *at any age* - thank you. I lost my mom when I was 17 and my dad became an alcoholic after that. It sucked, even though I was almost all "grown up", so the "at any age" really resonated. I'll post a comment at the end, but I'm sure the video will be great!
Don't worry about finding the same concept in other languages - if you're doing your research in English because that's your native language you're bound to hit less results as if you're scouring resources in the language you're investigating. Haha, and I can't think of any proper orphaned negative in my native German either - but maybe I'm just dumb. Either way, I enjoyed your video, thank you for making my Monday evening better!
We can see "whelm" in 19th century use, but it fell out after that: the hymn "My Hope Is Built" has the couplet "His oath, his covenant, his blood / Support me in the *whelming* flood" (where it has, effectively, the same meaning as "overwhelm").
10:30 I initially guessed Crayola would share 'cray' with crayfish. But one derives from a word for chalk and the other from a word for crab. It's fairly close considering chalk is made from shells of tiny sea-creatures and crabs are sea-creatures with shells.
The etymology of the word Chalk comes from the old words for Limestone. Saying that chalk is made from shells of tiny sea creatures is like saying it's made from stardust. Technically true if you go back far enough, but I'd highly doubt our ancestors who came up with the root words were aware of the connection.
I as a foreigner who reads a lot of old books sometimes actually use words like “couth” because I inferred their meaning from the orphaned word and I use it being unaware that the word is not in use anymore. Because to an ignorant foreigner it makes sense if a brute is “uncouth” than a noble prince must be “couth”.
2:07 We have those in Polish too. The verb "nienawidzić" (to hate) is an orphaned word bc nawidzić meant something simmilar to love and the nie suffix means it's negative. Literally. Nawidzić fell out of use and now we're stuck with this awkward double nie every time we want to say "I don't hate [blank]" "Ja nie nienawidzę [blank]"
6:20 Dude, I was literally sitting on the toilet when you said this...and it was by complete coincidence because I happened to need the toilet while I was watching this video....
overwhelming just comes from "whelming over", just like throwing over is overthrowing, or looking over is overlooking. but since "whelming" (meaning "engulfing" or "overcoming") is not used nearly as much now, "overwhelming" gets reanalysed to have the "over-" prefix, like "overstate" or "overcooked". so since you can also say "understate" and "undercooked", then people thought you can say "underwhelming". however, "whelming under" is nonsensical. you can't say "the waves whelmed UNDER the ship". it is a reasonable thing to think, though.
Whelm, to be engulfed in a surge of water, is hanging on by its fingernails because the English version of Dungeons and Dragons uses it to describe an attack by a water elemental. I’ve never heard it used in the metaphorical sense of the negatives though - and it’s already pretty similar to the meaning of overwhelmed…
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. The word "grunt" has been commonly used all of my life. It's a word that we use to describe the noise that people make when they are struggling. Normally when someone is lifting a heavy thing. I assumed that "Disgruntled" came from that.
The "Twi-" part in "Twilight" isn't a morpheme that doesn't appear elsewhere. In fact, the morpheme is the same as in the widely used words "Twig" and "Two" with the greater meaning of something being split or ambiguous. Just like twilight isn't completely light but it's also not completely dark. It's a split between those two.
This happens in Portuguese for the word “Desapontado” (disappointed) in the meaning of unsatisfied. Yes, there is the word “Apontado”, but it could never mean “satisfied”. Furthermore, they are hardly used as mere antonyms, I believe the same goes for English
I and my family often use “whelmed” and I have heard a few other people use it too. We also use “ruth” as in “ruthless” in the context of someone doing something carefully, or we also say “that person lacks ruth”
Ex-cranberry farmer here. Cranberries were called crane berries because the flower of the vine looks like the head and bill of a crane, not because cranes like eating them.
Orphaned initialisms are interesting, IBM is still International Business Machines company but DVD, MTV, and computer terms like JPG their long name is no longer mentioned by people, I only see people explain those long names on TikTok videos.
Some of these the prefix acts as an Intensifier or reflexive. Dis is not a negative, it expresses breaking, loss etc, so it's an Intensifier when applied to anything that already expresses some form of breaking. Disrupt, disjointed, disappear. Unjointed means something very different to disjointed. Unappearance is very different to disappearance. Unestablished is very different to disestablished. Displeasure isn't a lack of pleasure it's a loss of pleasure, a breaking of pleasure. But if it implies breaking then disrupture is breaking rupture, not an antonym, but an Intensifier. Disturb emphasizes the disorder created by the Latin verb turbare (mix, stir). Unordered is neutral in is description of lack of order, disordered is an undesirable or unpleasant lack of order. Disheveled is from old French deschevele, referring to untidy hair, not lack of hair. And whelm means the same as overwhelm (literally overturn). Underwhelm is a false opposite. Couth had a life as the past participle of cunnan into modern English, in the sense of known, familiar, well mannered, although the current usage is a back formation.
About the word Twilight, we have the same word in German "Zwielicht" and both literally mean "Two-light", with twi, just being another from of two, which isn't that weird, regarding German has at least 4 versions of two that I know of in dialects, being zwie, zwee, zwo and Zwei, but to get to the point, twilight refers to the time between night and day, and I think it refers to there being for a time 2 light sources on the sky; the moon and the sun. Theoretical, if we had a 2nd moon, or sun, we could even have a Trilight lol
I looked up disgruntled in Wiktionary and it said that on occasion, the prefix "dis" can serve to intensify the word it modifies. Another example they provided is disannul, which means to annul. This could be similar to how inflammable means flammable, instead of not flammable, like many other uses of in-. So basically, disgruntled just means "very grunty", ie complaining a lot.
Twi in Twilight DOES come from a specific prefix morpheme. Specifically it's a portmanteau of Twixt and Light. It comes from "Between the Light" shortened from "The time between the daylight and the night." Which then had the "and the night" left off, since it was pretty understood (what other time would the light be on one side of but the night/dark). Then we started to contract words a lot more getting "between" becoming betwixt. So "The time betwixt the light." Of course, that's kinda long when you're saying when you'll be meeting someone somewhere or hosting a party, or something is happening so maybe just "betwixt the light," then you get the contraction: 'twixt the light. From there we often leave off articles when it's a really common phrase: 'twixtlight. Then dropping the extra syllable so it makes an Iamb instead of a Phyrrus because english doesn't like double-stressed syllables when not making exclamations. That gives: 'twi'light. After a few hundred years of using it we left off the apostrophes and it just became "twilight." Still a correct spelling would still be 'twi'light if you wanted to be extra or show the old form of the word!
This video is so relevant. My siblings and I were joking all week about if our actions were nonchalant or chalant. Like "Geez, you are being so chalant right now"
Then there's flammable/inflammable, which mean the same thing. The "in" there is not a negation, it comes from another route. Similarly with intense; there's a word "tense", but it doesn't mean the opposite of intense.
I actually use gruntled by itself with the meaning of "a bit unhappy/displeased" (so I would say "Oh, that dog's just a little gruntled" mean "Oh, that dog's just a little upset"). But I also speak a New England American accent which are bit different than other American accents
Ah, but there is a subtle difference in meaning: "flammable" means "able to burn (with a flame)", whereas "inflammable" means "able to burst into flame(s)". So the "in-" prefix relates to the "into" aspect, and isn't a negative at all.
I feel that some of these orphaned negatives, such as the "whelmed" in "overwhelmed", are being used more frequently. Especially online. I think this is partially due to the mixing of cultures and languages online, where non-native English speakers assume the general English negative rules apply to Orphaned negatives when they don't, but it becomes popular enough online to where a large segment of native English speakers begin using it back home.
I can kindof see some hypothetical logic behind "disgruntled." If you feel like you aren't allowed to complain about something, you'll still be unhappy about it, just without a voice. Thus, I feel like "disgruntled" emphasizes that someone is unhappy, yet not in a position (whether it isn't worthwhile or through aggressive muting) to express their unhappiness. So unhappy, but without loudly protesting. Thus they "don't grunt," but that doesn't make them happy.
Although this does not deal in orphaned words, as such - rather double-negatives - I am put in mind of Valérie Čižmárová's Bronze Lyre-winning song of 1979 at the Bratislavská Lýra festival, 'Žádný ptáčník nemá křídla', which literally means 'No Birdwatcher Has No Wings' and which makes no sense at all as a song title. Along similar lines, thinking of her song titles with the negating 'ne-' prefix, I also think of her cover of Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution's 'Sha-La Love You', 'Dávno nejsem hloupá', which literally means 'Long Ago I Am Not Crazy', which is another nonsense title. The best sense that can be made of it is 'I've Not Been Crazy For A Long Time', which, despite it having five more words than the Czech-language title, still manages to scan singing the hook line to the song!
The "twi" in "twilight" may come from the largely out of fashion "betwixt", as it occurs betwixt day and night. Also, many of the words mentioned aren't orphaned negatives (also known as lost positives), but in fact come directly from another language. Also, the "dis" in disgruntled comes from a mostly unused meaning of the prefix, which is to heighten or intensify an unpleasant expression.
Whelmed and overwhelmed mean the same thing. People started adding the prefix of over to make it sound more dramatic, even though it’s totally redundant.
From wiktionary cran is Old English for crane (the bird) and has an entry for the Yola word krannberry (crane+berry) meaning gooseberry. It is likely that cran+berry is similarly derived but not meaning gooseberry. Also from wiktionary, crayfish is derived from the Old French word "crevice", with the cre/cray part deriving from the Frankish word for crab (*krebitja). Thus, the word crayfish means "crab fish".
The word for orphan in Turkish (öksüz) is an orphaned word. Ök means mother and -süz suffix is like "-less, without" we don't use the word "ök" (modern word for mother is "Anne") but we use "öksüz"
What unorphaned word should we bring back? Everyone been gruntled in the comments!
The word "Limey" should be used more often as slang for a British person. As an American, I'm fine with being called a Yank.
-Dave the Bloody Yank
Reckful. We still have "reckoning" and "reckless." Pretty sure it actually showed up in some dictionary, but certainly nobody uses it. A different word origin from "wreck" (derived from shipwrecks), "reck" is apparently old English for thoughtful awareness. "Reckful driving" would honestly be a hilariously counterintuitive phrase!
Reckless! “What do you mean I LACK RECK?”
Invincible: my enemies are vinceable; I have vinced the mountain! Invincible always bothered me until I connected it with "veni, vidi, vici"
Gruntled and Whelmed.
(words of the wise from Robin)
“I am not superstitious, but I am a little stitious” - Michael Scott, The Office
I'm substitious.
@@angreagachI'm microstitious.
@@horsepowermultimediaI'm megastitious.
@@duc8250I no longer believe in all that so I guess you can call me transtitious. My procharms are horseshoe and 4-leaf clover.
I'm tired of superficial people. I want somebody who is just a little ficial.
I have both myself used "Whelmed" in conversation and heard other people use it. It's honestly a fairly useful word
It's actually more complicated in German: instead of whelmed and overwhelmed, you have "bewältigt" and "überwältigt", but you have no "wältigen" as a single morphem - it HAS to be "bewältigen".
You’re bringing it back
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
I use it bcuz of teen titans
@@PHiLLy2cYoung Justice
Irritate is not a orphaned negative. It comes from Latin’s iratus. Also for y’all learning Spanish and don’t understand what gustar really means, the negative is disgustar. Look familiar? It should because it’s disgust. So gustar is gust (gusto). Gustare in Latin means to taste, so gustar means to appeal to one’s sense of taste/preferences. The food disgust me. I don’t like the food. The food me gusta (gusts me). I like the food.
Couth is a word I use on a semi frequent basis. I still use it as a negative and positive. “That man has a lot of couth.” Usually meaning “class, manners, and honor” all rolled into one. I also say “He has no couth!!” Meaning someone who has no class, manners, or honor.”
In the north of England someone who is considered to have a coarse disposition or uses coarse language is often described as having "nae couth" or (up here in the north east) "nee couth" . I think it's a great word.
@@aleisterpook1730 Northern English has some influence with Scots (derived from Old/Middle English), which will have preserved many features of those versions of the language. Hence it retaining the word couth.
The word "Limey" should be used more often as slang for a British person. As an American, I'm fine with being called a Yank.
-Dave the Bloody Yank
I think you might find Southerners who might not be OK with being called Yank.
@@CAMacKenziewould they rather be called Dixies? I feel like that would piss them off too
putain de yank hehehehe
@@CAMacKenzie If the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) with their evil slavery had won the US Civil War then internationally we Americans might be called Dixies. Fortunately, the C.S.A. lost so the international slang for someone from the U.S.A. is Yank not Dixie.
Thankfully I was already aware of the slang term and its origin thanks to Fruit Ninja's interstitial fruit-fact flavor text
Many of these affixless versions of orphans actually exist, but are obsolete or archaic. Whelm is one of these, and means the same as overwhelm. Noxious is the opposite of innocuous, both from Lat nocere, to harm.
I think it's worth pointing out that some words do have close relative opposites that simply have a slightly different form. The simplest one I always think of is inept => apt. However, your video had me thinking about innocuous and how innocuous without the prefix is similar to noxious which happens to have the opposite meaning. So, I dug into the etymology, and it appears that inocuus and noxius both existed in Latin, and both derived from nocere (to harm), so that they were, in the time of the Romans, much like inept and apt are to us today. Thankfully, they have both survived. We're just further away from the time when their relationship would have been less perplexing.
I was thinking similarly. A fair amount of parent words likely appear unrelated due to how flexible spellings were prior to dictionary codification. Apt and Inept look unrelated because ept was spelled and pronounced apt when the words were codified.
Other orphaned words might be because the analogy they were built off fell out of use. Disgruntled is "orphaned" because a happy grunting pig might have once been described as "gruntling." I bet most people can imagine a pig gruntled about finding a truffle.
Also Innocuous and Noxious have at least one more sibling: Innocent. All are likely french loan words born from Nocere.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed!
I wasn't thinking about that, but you, sir, are making a whole lot of sense
So they're words whose parents went to the store to get milk and never came back
@@hmnhntr More like words that left their parents and grandparents back in the old country.
Irritated isn't an orphaned negative. It's an adjective derived from "iratus", Latin for angry.
Which means the only question is why it got the extra "r", while "irate" didn't.
@NovaSaber It's probably just for looks. Sort of like how "run" becomes "running".
@@NovaSaberbecause in irate, at least in my general American accent, is pronounced like I-Rate, one R. Irritate is more like EER-Rih-TATE
That's not true. Irritated came from irritatus which came from Proto-Italic *enratos. Iratus came from the noun ira, meaning anger or wrath. They look similar, but they're not the same.
Fun fact: In Polish, the word "nienawidzić" (meaning: to hate) is actually an orphaned negative. It's derived from the prefix nie- (that negates the meaning of the stem) and the word "nawidzić". The word "nawidzić" last existed in Old Polish, but the negated form still exists in Modern Polish.
We have this word in russian and it's also orphaned negative! It seems, that verb "to hate" in slavic languages is orphaned
Doesn't "nawidzić" mean to see? So, together, "nienawidzę cię" would in literal sense mean "I won't see you a lot"? In nienawidzę, which is a present tense word that actually looks like a future tense word, "widzę" is identical to the word for "I see".
And in Polish, the prefix 'na' often indicates future tense, as well as the amount or proportion of that thing. E.g 'jem' is 'I eat', but 'najem [się]' means 'I will eat (and become satisfied). And since 'no' is 'nie', 'nie najem się' means 'I won't eat enough to become satisfied'.
So 'nienawidzę cię', read as 'nie nawidzę cię' would mean 'I won't see you a lot' or 'I won't see you sufficiently'. So, originally, when you said this to someone, you were subtly telling them that you hate them, by saying that you don't want to spend time with them, that you want to avoid them.
Same for the inanimate 'nienawidzę tego'. 'I hate that', 'I won't see a lot of that' - implying that you want to avoid that "thing".
@@DogDogGodFog No.
@@bartoszszczepaniak169 Yes.
@@DogDogGodFog You Polish? No it fucking does not mean "to see", to see is "widzieć". You Yankee blockheads have the audacity to tell me what the correct word is? Pathetic. In modern Polish, "nawidzić" isn't a word.
The prefix in “Twilight” reminds me of the end of “Betwixt” (an archaic form of between). So, it sort of makes sense for the time between light and no light is called “between-light”
If I apply Grimm's Law to twi- or twice I am ending up with Zwie- or zwei in German. There is Zwielicht (two sources of light, twilight), Zwieback (twice baked, biscuit) or Zwietracht (two opposing opinions in a group, Discord).
If I'm not mistaken, that's not a coincidence. "Tw" is often related to pairs, halves and the number two (hence the random "w" in "two"). Between, betwixt, twilight, twain, two, twin, etc.
the German «Weise» is pronounced roughly like "visor" is in your accent.
as for examples of orphaned words in German: «harmlos» means, well, "harmless" - but the word «Harm» is at best extremely archaic in German and will probably only understood intuitively by people who are familiar with the English word; also we do not have an equivalent to "harmful" (as in, we use different words for that)
another example is that «vergessen» means "to forget" but we have no cognate of "get" alone; «-gessen» also appears in the past participle of «essen» ("to eat") but that is afaik etymologically unrelated and just there bc «gegessen» sounds better than -«geessen»-
also i think "untoward" isn't "un-" + "toward" but "unto" + "-ward"
which means the "un-" isn't even a negative but a variant of "on"
Orphaned negatives brought me back to the word *negative* which I believe is a false orphaned negative onto itself. At least in the Croatian version of it. In Croatian, ''ne'' means ''no'', and negatives are most often formed with the prefix of ''ne''. ''Nedovoljan'' means ''infufficient'', and ''dovoljan'' means ''sufficient''. ''Nespretan'' means ''clumsy'', and ''spretan'' means ''agile''. Thus, in Croatian, it might appear that the very word ''negativan'' (negative) has a pair of ''gativan'', meaning something like ''positive'' or ''happy''. However... ''gativan'' doesn't exist and never existed, because ''ne'' in ''negativan'' isn't a prefix, but a foreign word adapted into the language. I wonder how many more examples like that various languages have.
But we actually *do* have a couple of orphaned negatives of our own with the prefix of ''ne''. There is a word ''nestašan'', which means ''mischivieous'', and is usually used for kids (and sometimes adults) who are mildly misbehaving, but still in a somewhat charming and harmless way. Using the logic I mentioned above, one would assume that ''stašan'' means something like ''calm'' or ''well-behaved'', but no... ''stašan'' doesn't mean anything, and based on everything I know, it never did.
Polish niedźwiedź (bear), nietoperz (bat) - dźwiedź*, toperz*.
Nie- in niedźwiedź is not the negation prefix "nie-", but instead the whole syllable "niedź-" is a corruption of "miedź-", old Polish for honey. Early in Common Slavic the original word for bear became taboo, and it was replaced by a circumlocution that means "honey knower" (or to use English cognates, "meadwise"). If it were coined in modern Polish, it would take the form "miodowiad". In modern Polish, honey is "miód", and "miedź" means copper (etymology disputed).
Nietoperz splits as nieto-perz, or "night feather" (both bits cognate with English). If it were coined in modern Polish, it would take the form "nocopiór".
Pozdrav :)
I remember a joke from Caddicarus, where Caddy says he feels the opposite of "disgruntled", then follows it and a pause with "I'm... 'gruntled'." One of my favorite grammar-related jokes from his videos.
The existence of the words "happy", "merry" and "jolly" implies the existence of the words "happ", "merr" and "joll" - at least we know that "joll" is ultimately derived from the French "jolie" but what about "happ"?
There is a word "hap", meaning luck or chance. (It's pretty archaic.) Hence someone happy is someone fortunate.
@@genius11433 Hey, "mishap" is yet another orphaned word, same as "happening"
@@csolisr So it just happened that some derivates survived. I see.
@@genius11433Oh so 'happenstance' probably has the same etymology too huh?
@@csolisrmishappy
You know, I always wondered why 'uncouth' existed when 'couth' isn't a word in of itself. It was the only orphan negative that I noticed. This video made me feel very gruntled!
It was a word if you go back to early Modern English and beyond. In Old English, "cuþ" (pronounced fairly similarly to the modern word) meant "familiar", so "uncuþ" meant "unfamiliar" (this changed later to mean "unrefined, rough"). They're actually related to Old English "cunnan", the ancestor of "can/could", which could mean either "to know something personally (a place, skill, person, etc.)" or "to know how to do something" at the time.
There was also "seldcuþ" ("strange, weird"), with a prefix related to "seldom", which I wish we still had.
I think there is still a legitimate, if not common, use of couth: as a noun. As in, "He has couth." This is the sense that he has manners and sense.
Honestly I swear I have heard "Couth" used before, to mean the opposite of Uncouth, Although I can't remember where.
I was very whelmed while watching Young Justice.
Stay whelmed, brother 🖖
If you count anyone who has lost both parents _at any age_ as an orphan, then most of us become orphans eventually - I'm 72, but not yet orphaned (Hi, Dad!)
I assume the technical meaning is losing your parents as your caretakers and being taken care by other people. So moving out from your parents to live on your own doesn't count. Being a legal adult probably also invalidates being an orphan even if today's world that doesn't guarantee you being able to take care of yourself.
Technically;
Bruce Wayne/Batman is an orphan due to the murder of his parents when he was a child, leaving him in the care of Alfred the Butler.
Similar with Peter Parker/Spider-Man whose parents were spies that died on a mission whilst he was a child, leaving him in the care of Uncle Ben & Aunt May.
Wow, you're lucky.
To be fair, the suffix "chalant" nonchalant comes from an old french term "achalant" which means annoying or whiny. "Achaller" means to bug someone
I've always wondered if the same process happened with some current words with the less suffix such as gormless, ruthless, listless and feckless as we don't have the words gorm,ruth,list and feck with the same definitions any more.
Listless is related to the German word “Lustlos”, and Lust in German is more like a general desire. One could have “Lust nach irgendetwas” or “desire towards anything”
Listless.
From "liste", Middle English word meaning "pleasure, joy, delight"
Gormless
a British dialectal word, from gome "notice, understanding" (c. 1200), and from Old Norse gaumr "care, heed"
Ruthless
Ruth means to show pitty or compassion (among other things)
Ruth is itself split from rue and the -th suffix. Rue (verb) =to make someone sorry / regretful.
-th suffix = forming nouns from verbs or adjectives. Specifically, nouns with a qualitative meaning. Such as "growth" (n) from "grow"(v), or "depth"(n) from "deep"(adj)
Feckless
From 1590s. Scottish shortened form of effect + less.
Effect is from 13 century. Old French efet.
@@shanerooney7288 amazing thank you! Did you use an etymological dictionary for these? I've been trying to find a good one but to no avail as yet.
@@Alexander-mw1ek great thanks for the explanation 👍🏻
Well, Ruth survives as a woman's name that still means compassionate friend, the opposite of ruthless (lack of compassion).
In Finnish, orphan is "orpo". It's quite interesting that our prime minister's name is Petteri Orpo.
It seems that Finnish is not the only Fenno-Ugrian language that has taken on that word of Indo-European origins as the word 'árva', which is clearly in the same vein as 'orpo', in Hungarian means 'orphan' and it features in the lyrics of one of the songs at my TH-cam channel, Beáta Karda's 'Jöjj, és fogd a kezem' ('Come And Hold My Hand'). I do wonder if there's an 'N-dropping' thing going on in Fenno-Ugrian languages when they borrow a word from an Indo-European source, like 'árvan' becomes 'árva' and 'orpon' becomes 'orpo', as when one inserts an 'N' in 'fogd' one gets 'fongd', which reminds me an awful lot of the German verb 'fangen', 'to seize', as in also 'to hold'.
Probably a bit before your time Patrick, but there was a very popular British comedian called Frankie Howerd who was fond of saying when he was surprised about something; 'My flabber has never been so ghasted!' Always made us laugh as kids in the 1970s.
Not quite the same, but related, I think.
"Stay Whelmed and feel the Aster" - Robin, Young Justice.
In Spanish, the word "nudo", meaning "naked", always has the prefix "des-", because the other word "nudo" means "knot". They are distinct in Latin (nūdus, nōdus) and French (nu, nœud), so if you say «disnu» or «dénu» in French it sounds funny.
"Dénudé" does exist in French, it means "undressed/disrobed/no longer clothed". I just looked it up and apparently it's from Latin "denudare", composed of "nūdus" like you said and the prefix "de" (which just means some action is fully and intensely completed, for example it's easy for English speakers to see it in the verb "declare": de + clear = "MAKE oneself clear").
You explained this concept impeccably.
I'm sure no one would agree that he did it peccably
Thank you Name Explain. This video has left me thoroughly whelmed.
But not overly so.
The DC animated series 'Young Justice' plays around with these a lot. I think it started in an episode where Robin was talking about how people can be underwhelmed and overwhelmed, but not just whelmed. After that, the team starts using the words whelming and whelmed, every chance they get.
Yeah, that absolutely infected my language and I've been using whelmed the same way ever since.
In Italian there is the verb " nuocere" that means to be damaging.
While the abjective "nocuo" is not used its antinonym has survivedb as 'innocuo".
Just as English has “noxious” Italian has “nocivo” those are clearly the opposite of innocuous deriving from the Latin verb “nocere”. They just have a slightly different spelling to be obvious antonyms but they are.
@@MUNTraiano as well as nociception, pain sensation
Other examples of words that use the dis- prefix as an intensifier (or which came from an intensifier) and not a negative are disturb, distend, and discussion.
A cool one is dispose, which has two main meanings (among several other related ones): to get rid of, or to be brought to do something (as in "this medicine disposes me to sleep"). It could be analyzed as a negation of "pose" from Latin meaning put (like I "un-put" something or get rid of it), or an intensifier of putting something somewhere.
So even though the prefix has two, essentially opposite meanings, they both come from the same Latin source.
So, “presume” means to suppose before knowing, that means that “sume” would mean to know and “postsume” would mean to draw wider conclusions after knowing
Like posthumous.
You're assuming to much...
Actually chalant is a word in the dictionary - listed as the opposite of nonchalant…
And I would put the origin of disgruntled in the same category as inflammable - as likely related to extracting a “grunt”.
Innocuous does have a related opposite - noxious, it just as a variant spelling.
Inflammable has never made sense to me because it means the same as flammable (easily catches fire). The "in" part is not changing the word to mean not flammable.
@@indigobunting5041 Actually “inflammable” means more easily ignited than flammable or simply combustible.
@@indigobunting5041 reason is that it isn't in-flammable, it is inflame-able, where inflame is to set on fire (loan word from french/latin iirc)
Thanks for the Cranberry morphemes explanation. "Cran" is an outdated term for "Crane", just like "cobweb" the "cob" is an outdated term for "spider." In "coleslaw", "cole" means "cabbage" And don't forget the "pea" in "peacock" and "peahen."
With KFC, the reason it's officially NOT Kentucky Fried Chicken is because the Commonwealth of Kentucky started demanding royalties for use of "Kentucky." So the company offficially became KFC. In Quebec, where it was "Pulet Frit Kentucky", it's now just "PFK"
This is correct. Kentucky Bluegrass, Kentucky Derby, and Kentucky Bourbon did not change their names and pay the fee.
I have a secondary interpretation of "Untoward"
Instead of assuming it being an affixed "toward" perhaps it is more of a compound word of unto and ward. Unto being, well, "on to" and ward being in direction of.
IR in IRRITATED is not a prefix.
Source: I speak portuguese, and we have the verb "Irritar" meaning 'to bother'/'to cause one to be angry' (well, 'to irritate')
So the IR part of the word it's from the same Latin radical
I’ve always found the word ‘evitable’ (meaning can be prevented) interesting. It is such an uncommon word that most people probably haven’t heard of it, whereas ‘inevitable’ is an everyday word. Not sure if it counts as an orphaned negative, but I find it interesting.
vincible is similar. Being vincible is the default so people just don't use it
I'm not dismayed - I'm mayed . . .
We do also have some orphan negatives in French.
One that comes to mind is "inquiet" meaning 'worried'. Here if we remove the 'in' which usually negates word we get "quiet" which is not a word in French.
The best part is when we take the noun form, it is no longer an orphan negative! "Inquiétude" means 'a state of being worried' while "quiétude" does mean 'a state of peace of mind', but it is seldom used and is considered as an old way to speak/write.
I believe it is the same with "quiet", where it used to be an adjective meaning 'not worried' but that has been completely stopped being used, I think it is also the etymology of the English 'quiet' meaning not emitting noise, being peaceful. I find it funny how French kept one half while English kept the other half.
"The TV is way too unquiet. Can you turn it down?"
@@Liggliluff
I mean the origin is very interesting, in Latin, 'quietus' meant something like "at peace". French took it as "at peace of mind" while English took it as "calm, not making noise"
Huh, that's weird.
In Spanish, "quieto" definitely exists, meaning "still, unmoving". Very common word.
But yeah "quietud" is seldom ever used.
This video properly whelmed me
off-putting is a hyphenated adjective of the phrasal verb "to put off". calling it orphaned is like calling phrasal verbs orphaned
Really entertaining video! 😊 One of my favourite orphaned negatives is impromptu, meaning unplanned. This video definitely had an air of promptu about it! 😂 Thanks, Patrick! 😊
Are you sure it’s orphaned?
Seems to be the opposite of ‘prompted’
I would say that furled is a word , meaning rolled up.
Yeah you do still see it used in the context of sailing and flags.
I would argue that "whelmed" and "cuth/cooth" are words. Just because something isn't directly in a dictionary it doesn't mean it's not a "real word".
He did make the point that there has been a conscious effort on the part of several writers to revivify these dead parent words, and this has been somewhat successful in the case of whelm.
@@DadgeCity yea but even if there wasn't a small movement to do that, i would still make that argument. i feel like most people would understand many of those words due to their familiarity with their counterparts and with context.
Funny, but I don't think of off as a prefix in off-putting. It's more just a word order reversal from put off.
I’m a pilot and one of our standard emergency procedures is for “Inadvertent IMC” (IMC is Instrument Meteorological Conditions, when you can’t see outside the plane and have to rely on instruments).
After memorizing the procedure and thinking about it a while it occurred to me that the word Inadvertent would imply the existence of the word Advertant, which I nor anyone else I worked with had ever been aware of before. It apparently does exist, having looked it up later, but it is so much less commonly used that it might as well not exist anymore.
Swedish has a lot of these. The Swedish word for word is "ord", and the un- prefix is o-, so these "unwords" are "oord". But there's the thing about removing the prefix and getting something that should be the opposite when it isn't. These are "ununwords", or "ooord' (pronounced with three distinct o).
Some words:
oförskämd (unashamed) - förskämd (corrupted/ruined/spoiled)
odjur (beast/monster) - djur (animal)
oskuld (virgin) - skuld (debt)
olycka (accident) - lycka (fortune/luck)
ovett (reproach/blame) - vett (behave/civilised)
oväder (bad weather) - väder (weather)
oljud (noise) - ljud (sound)
otäck (unpleasant/frightening) - täck (to cover)
otymplig (unwieldy) - tymplig (---)
ofantlig (immense) - fantlig (---)
odåga (rascal) - dåga (---)
ohyra (pest) - hyra (rent)
olympiska spelen (olympic games) - lympiska spelen (---)
orolig (worried) - rolig (funny)
You can probably see how they came to be by logic. Bad weather is "umweather", a beast is an "unanimal", and such. But they've changed meaning over time. Some actually comes from opposite where "täck" meant beautiful and nice, but it's not used today.
I don't know if this works, but when you explained orphaned negatives, what came to my mind were the words 'object', 'subject', 'inject', 'reject'
"AAAAAAH Perry the Platypus! Your timing is impeccable. And when I say impeccable, I mean COMPLETELY PECCABLE!"
"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"
"I think you can in Europe."
one of my favourites is "important". "portant" isn't a word but to get the opposite of "important" we add another prefix to get "unimportant"
I only just started this video - I'm into linguistics and etymology - but just for the shoutout to people who became orphans *at any age* - thank you. I lost my mom when I was 17 and my dad became an alcoholic after that. It sucked, even though I was almost all "grown up", so the "at any age" really resonated. I'll post a comment at the end, but I'm sure the video will be great!
Don't worry about finding the same concept in other languages - if you're doing your research in English because that's your native language you're bound to hit less results as if you're scouring resources in the language you're investigating. Haha, and I can't think of any proper orphaned negative in my native German either - but maybe I'm just dumb.
Either way, I enjoyed your video, thank you for making my Monday evening better!
We can see "whelm" in 19th century use, but it fell out after that: the hymn "My Hope Is Built" has the couplet "His oath, his covenant, his blood / Support me in the *whelming* flood" (where it has, effectively, the same meaning as "overwhelm").
Doesn't irritate come from ire : fire in Latin?
10:30 I initially guessed Crayola would share 'cray' with crayfish. But one derives from a word for chalk and the other from a word for crab. It's fairly close considering chalk is made from shells of tiny sea-creatures and crabs are sea-creatures with shells.
The etymology of the word Chalk comes from the old words for Limestone.
Saying that chalk is made from shells of tiny sea creatures is like saying it's made from stardust. Technically true if you go back far enough, but I'd highly doubt our ancestors who came up with the root words were aware of the connection.
Pretty cray.
I as a foreigner who reads a lot of old books sometimes actually use words like “couth” because I inferred their meaning from the orphaned word and I use it being unaware that the word is not in use anymore. Because to an ignorant foreigner it makes sense if a brute is “uncouth” than a noble prince must be “couth”.
2:07 We have those in Polish too. The verb "nienawidzić" (to hate) is an orphaned word bc nawidzić meant something simmilar to love and the nie suffix means it's negative. Literally. Nawidzić fell out of use and now we're stuck with this awkward double nie every time we want to say "I don't hate [blank]"
"Ja nie nienawidzę [blank]"
The Young Justice/Name Explain crossover we definitely needed
6:20 Dude, I was literally sitting on the toilet when you said this...and it was by complete coincidence because I happened to need the toilet while I was watching this video....
overwhelming just comes from "whelming over", just like throwing over is overthrowing, or looking over is overlooking.
but since "whelming" (meaning "engulfing" or "overcoming") is not used nearly as much now, "overwhelming" gets reanalysed to have the "over-" prefix, like "overstate" or "overcooked". so since you can also say "understate" and "undercooked", then people thought you can say "underwhelming". however, "whelming under" is nonsensical. you can't say "the waves whelmed UNDER the ship". it is a reasonable thing to think, though.
Makes me mildly irate to see him making mistakes like this from time to time, as he presents himself as someone who studies etymology.
@@Taneth it's like saying "troduction" is an orphaned word because we have "introduction" and "outroduction" (or "intro" and "outro", more commonly)
Whelm, to be engulfed in a surge of water, is hanging on by its fingernails because the English version of Dungeons and Dragons uses it to describe an attack by a water elemental.
I’ve never heard it used in the metaphorical sense of the negatives though - and it’s already pretty similar to the meaning of overwhelmed…
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. The word "grunt" has been commonly used all of my life. It's a word that we use to describe the noise that people make when they are struggling. Normally when someone is lifting a heavy thing. I assumed that "Disgruntled" came from that.
The "Twi-" part in "Twilight" isn't a morpheme that doesn't appear elsewhere. In fact, the morpheme is the same as in the widely used words "Twig" and "Two" with the greater meaning of something being split or ambiguous. Just like twilight isn't completely light but it's also not completely dark. It's a split between those two.
I've been whelmed by this video. Thank you for that!
This happens in Portuguese for the word “Desapontado” (disappointed) in the meaning of unsatisfied. Yes, there is the word “Apontado”, but it could never mean “satisfied”. Furthermore, they are hardly used as mere antonyms, I believe the same goes for English
Dare I say... "Desapontado" has its roots in English.😂
@@shanerooney7288 It probably comes from latin
This explains why in Finnic and Baltic languages the word is "orpo" or similar, while elsewhere it is more like "orphan" or similar.
I and my family often use “whelmed” and I have heard a few other people use it too.
We also use “ruth” as in “ruthless” in the context of someone doing something carefully, or we also say “that person lacks ruth”
Ex-cranberry farmer here. Cranberries were called crane berries because the flower of the vine looks like the head and bill of a crane, not because cranes like eating them.
Couth is absolutely a word that people use even in modern times if they want to sound hoity toity, myself included.
Orphaned initialisms are interesting, IBM is still International Business Machines company but DVD, MTV, and computer terms like JPG their long name is no longer mentioned by people, I only see people explain those long names on TikTok videos.
7:40 Actually couth is a fairly standard word in Scots. I think it was in Middle English too.
Also kempt.
Some of these the prefix acts as an Intensifier or reflexive. Dis is not a negative, it expresses breaking, loss etc, so it's an Intensifier when applied to anything that already expresses some form of breaking. Disrupt, disjointed, disappear. Unjointed means something very different to disjointed. Unappearance is very different to disappearance. Unestablished is very different to disestablished. Displeasure isn't a lack of pleasure it's a loss of pleasure, a breaking of pleasure. But if it implies breaking then disrupture is breaking rupture, not an antonym, but an Intensifier. Disturb emphasizes the disorder created by the Latin verb turbare (mix, stir). Unordered is neutral in is description of lack of order, disordered is an undesirable or unpleasant lack of order. Disheveled is from old French deschevele, referring to untidy hair, not lack of hair.
And whelm means the same as overwhelm (literally overturn). Underwhelm is a false opposite.
Couth had a life as the past participle of cunnan into modern English, in the sense of known, familiar, well mannered, although the current usage is a back formation.
About the word Twilight, we have the same word in German "Zwielicht" and both literally mean "Two-light", with twi, just being another from of two, which isn't that weird, regarding German has at least 4 versions of two that I know of in dialects, being zwie, zwee, zwo and Zwei, but to get to the point, twilight refers to the time between night and day, and I think it refers to there being for a time 2 light sources on the sky; the moon and the sun. Theoretical, if we had a 2nd moon, or sun, we could even have a Trilight lol
Someone in another comment expanded on twilight coming from betwixtlight.
Twi in Twilight comes from Tweone, meaning "in 2s". This is because there are twilight once in the morning and once in the evening, dawn and dusk.
I looked up disgruntled in Wiktionary and it said that on occasion, the prefix "dis" can serve to intensify the word it modifies. Another example they provided is disannul, which means to annul. This could be similar to how inflammable means flammable, instead of not flammable, like many other uses of in-. So basically, disgruntled just means "very grunty", ie complaining a lot.
Twi in Twilight DOES come from a specific prefix morpheme. Specifically it's a portmanteau of Twixt and Light. It comes from "Between the Light" shortened from "The time between the daylight and the night." Which then had the "and the night" left off, since it was pretty understood (what other time would the light be on one side of but the night/dark).
Then we started to contract words a lot more getting "between" becoming betwixt. So "The time betwixt the light." Of course, that's kinda long when you're saying when you'll be meeting someone somewhere or hosting a party, or something is happening so maybe just "betwixt the light," then you get the contraction: 'twixt the light. From there we often leave off articles when it's a really common phrase: 'twixtlight. Then dropping the extra syllable so it makes an Iamb instead of a Phyrrus because english doesn't like double-stressed syllables when not making exclamations. That gives: 'twi'light. After a few hundred years of using it we left off the apostrophes and it just became "twilight."
Still a correct spelling would still be 'twi'light if you wanted to be extra or show the old form of the word!
This video is so relevant. My siblings and I were joking all week about if our actions were nonchalant or chalant. Like "Geez, you are being so chalant right now"
I’ll be back in a few centuries to hear you explain how words like “couth,” “gruntled,” and “chalant” are actually derived from their negatives.
the "Twi" in twilight does mean something though
it's just straight up the number two, but an older version
it's the same thing in german Zwielicht
I believe that crayfish is supposed to come from a French word crevisse. Twi- in twilight is from the number two.
"Whelming" is used in the Hymn, "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand", as follows:
"His oath, his covenant, his blood,
Support me in the whelming flood."
Then there's flammable/inflammable, which mean the same thing. The "in" there is not a negation, it comes from another route. Similarly with intense; there's a word "tense", but it doesn't mean the opposite of intense.
The “off” in “offputing” is not a negator. It’s a directional modifier. To put someone off of something.
I actually use gruntled by itself with the meaning of "a bit unhappy/displeased" (so I would say "Oh, that dog's just a little gruntled" mean "Oh, that dog's just a little upset"). But I also speak a New England American accent which are bit different than other American accents
I have always appreciated inflammable and flammable, where you remove the prefix... and it is a word, but the meaning doesn't change.
Ah, but there is a subtle difference in meaning: "flammable" means "able to burn (with a flame)", whereas "inflammable" means "able to burst into flame(s)". So the "in-" prefix relates to the "into" aspect, and isn't a negative at all.
I feel that some of these orphaned negatives, such as the "whelmed" in "overwhelmed", are being used more frequently. Especially online. I think this is partially due to the mixing of cultures and languages online, where non-native English speakers assume the general English negative rules apply to Orphaned negatives when they don't, but it becomes popular enough online to where a large segment of native English speakers begin using it back home.
Surely innocuous can be de-orphaned, if we consider noxious to be a modernised form of nocuous.
I can kindof see some hypothetical logic behind "disgruntled." If you feel like you aren't allowed to complain about something, you'll still be unhappy about it, just without a voice. Thus, I feel like "disgruntled" emphasizes that someone is unhappy, yet not in a position (whether it isn't worthwhile or through aggressive muting) to express their unhappiness. So unhappy, but without loudly protesting.
Thus they "don't grunt," but that doesn't make them happy.
This video has left me gruntled. I was pleasantly whelmed.
Although this does not deal in orphaned words, as such - rather double-negatives - I am put in mind of Valérie Čižmárová's Bronze Lyre-winning song of 1979 at the Bratislavská Lýra festival, 'Žádný ptáčník nemá křídla', which literally means 'No Birdwatcher Has No Wings' and which makes no sense at all as a song title. Along similar lines, thinking of her song titles with the negating 'ne-' prefix, I also think of her cover of Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution's 'Sha-La Love You', 'Dávno nejsem hloupá', which literally means 'Long Ago I Am Not Crazy', which is another nonsense title. The best sense that can be made of it is 'I've Not Been Crazy For A Long Time', which, despite it having five more words than the Czech-language title, still manages to scan singing the hook line to the song!
Overwhelmed and Underwhelmed makes me upset. I want "whelmed" to be a word and I'll use it
"Can something be just plain 'couth?' I bet strong sad is just plain couth."
This video left me feeling very whelmed and gruntled Thank you😂❤🙂
Ah Perry the Platypus, your timing is impeccable
Honestly, I am gruntled that this video has left me completely whelmed.
In the US KFC still uses Kentucky Fried Chicken branding on all their packaging.
The "twi" in "twilight" may come from the largely out of fashion "betwixt", as it occurs betwixt day and night. Also, many of the words mentioned aren't orphaned negatives (also known as lost positives), but in fact come directly from another language. Also, the "dis" in disgruntled comes from a mostly unused meaning of the prefix, which is to heighten or intensify an unpleasant expression.
Whelmed and overwhelmed mean the same thing. People started adding the prefix of over to make it sound more dramatic, even though it’s totally redundant.
From wiktionary cran is Old English for crane (the bird) and has an entry for the Yola word krannberry (crane+berry) meaning gooseberry. It is likely that cran+berry is similarly derived but not meaning gooseberry.
Also from wiktionary, crayfish is derived from the Old French word "crevice", with the cre/cray part deriving from the Frankish word for crab (*krebitja). Thus, the word crayfish means "crab fish".
I am very whelmed with this video, thanks.
The word for orphan in Turkish (öksüz) is an orphaned word. Ök means mother and -süz suffix is like "-less, without" we don't use the word "ök" (modern word for mother is "Anne") but we use "öksüz"
The fact that gruntled, couth and ritated were words leaves me whelmed