conuly | Question!

I think that the British do use canny still, at least I do use it (not that I am British... but that is where I like to get my influence from)

I don't know a single person that uses it, so I may have to start!

I just might have gotten my impression from reading a little too much Sherlock Holmesm, if I am to be frank.

Why don't some words have logical opposites? We have unruly and ruthless, but one can't be ruly or ruth (okay, that word DOES exist, it means mercy, but it's obsolete). Very few people use the word canny (just me, as far as I can tell, and only around family).

First of, the logical opposite of ruthless would have to be ruthful; since ruthless is an adjective derived from the noun ruth by application of the suffix -less, ruth is not the opposite, but the stem.

Then there's other funny stuff from the realm of morphology, such as allomorphs. Allomorphs are morphemes (=elements that words are made up from and that recur) that don't have their own meaning in the English language - such as re-, per-, con-, de- etc, or -ceive, -gress, -mit etc. In Latin, where these exampels come from, they all have their own meaning (re- = back, per- = by means of/ through, con- from cum = with, de- = (away) from; -ceive from capere = take/ grasp/ catch, -gress from gradi = go, -mit from mittere = send, let go, allow), but in English, they work only in combination with other allomorphs. That's because when these words were adapted to English, only the compounds of the original Latin stems were taken, not the stems. Probably the reason for that is that there were English synonyms for the stems, but not for the compounds: There is already an English word for "go", obviously, so there was no need for gradi; however, most likely there was no word carrying the exact meaning of progress, so it was adapted.

As for pretty words turning obsolete, blame the speakers...

Argh. Sorry about the "allomorph" thing; it's, of course, formatives, not allomorphs. Allomorphs would be -ceive and -cept- (perceive/perception). Aaaah.

As if I weren't already worried enough about my linguistics exam, now I start mixing up what little stuff I had in my head. Not good. So not good.

1. Yes, you're right, my bad. I typed this up in the heat of the moment, and did not have time to make sure I was using words accurately.
2. Well, I did say I wasn't going to bother going back to Latin :) I prefer gress to gradi, anyway. AND I prefer it to go. So, hmph, I can use it if I please :)

Of course you can ;) Strictly speaking, gress is the perfect form (as in past and present perfect, not as in ideal) of gradi; but most people will be confused either way, whether you say "Why don't we gress to the cinema" or "Why don't we grade to the cinema" henceforth (yet another pretty, almost obsolete word!), so you can as well pick what you like best...

I believe that "-gress" comes from the Latin "egredior." I think it's another word for "to go." (So "progress" means "to go forth," "regress" means "to go back," "digress" means "to go aside," etc.) It made a more convenient root than "ire," because that's all irregular and stupid and nobody wants to have to conjugate it.

*goes off to whelm her garden*

-gress is derived from Latin gradi, 'to go'.

Lots of people still say "canny" - "a canny deal", "that wasn't such a canny thing to do", etc. It may be a regional variation; where I live we're quite close to British Columbia, so have a number of Canadian expressions in the local dialect. I haven't seen "whelm" used in reference to gardening, but I've seen it used in reference to emotion.

English is such a weird language because it's patched together from the languages of everyone who ever invaded England, and there were a lot of invasions. It's only gotten weirder since America happened and words like potlach, sushi, glasnost, fatwa and didgeridu started getting added to the stew.

I love it. I think we should add lots of new words, preferably pretty-sounding ones with good rhymes, AND also revive all the cool archaic ones, to build ourselves a language of truly stunning elegance, complexity, and poetic precision.

I think we should add lots of new words, preferably pretty-sounding ones with good rhymes, AND also revive all the cool archaic ones, to build ourselves a language of truly stunning elegance, complexity, and poetic precision.

I'm with you...

There's no opposite of flammable, is there? Logically it would be inflammable but of course that means the same thing. Crazy language.

And gruntle! Gruntle is a neat word that you never see used seriously. I saw it in an ad ("Become a gruntled employee") but I don't know if it's actually a word, and if so, what it means.

Noncombustible.

You were talking about logical opposites. Noncombustible works, of course, but logically inflammable should be the opposite of flammable. I know the origins of the words, I'm just complaining.

The opposite of disgruntled, probably. Not disgruntled. Gruntled. ;)

I know, that's why I brought it up in a discussion of opposites.

I looked it up, and it turns out that it is in the dictionary, and means to put into a good mood. But the etymology says it's a back-formation from disgruntled, so where did that word come from originally? Apparently, from a Middle English word meaning to grunt or grumble. o.O