Question!

[conuly]

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).

Or what about words that shouldn't have opposites, but should exist, like gress (progress, ingress, egress, regress, agressive, digress, congress....) meaning... um... okay, I know I could just look up the Latin, but let's say it means "go". I like go. It's a fun game. Or movement! It's a fun movement too!

Or what about whelm? That's a real word. It means to turn over dirt or somesuch. Why do we no longer whelm the garden?

*sighs*

Well, there's my plan for the next year. Introduce new-old words back into the English language, via carefully removing prefixes.

Comments

[conuly]

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 :)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

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...