this may be of some interest, regarding
lost positives; it's from a mailing I sent to my subs. list on 04/07/09..
the worthless word for the day is: sheveled
[by shortening] (also shevelled)
rare, archaic : disheveled
"He bowed his tall white head into my shevelled hair."
- Richard Blackmore, Erema (1877)
"After the prisoner was delivered to Lexington the
next day in sheveled and humbled state, the posse was
dismissed..."
- Reese Prescott, The Rockbridge County Gazette,
June 28, 1904
(but)
"Is sheveled the opposite of disheveled? Recreational
linguists call these words lost positives."
- Charles Elster, What in the Word? (2005)
"She was a descript person, a woman in a state of
total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled,
and she moved in a gainly way."
- Jack Winter; The New Yorker, 25 July 1994
___
you never know how a prefix is going to effect things;
some expect that sheveled existed as a positive form
(as happened with couth and kempt), but in this case
the word was formed (as per OED) by aphesis.
this week: lost positives, or not
here's a link to the entire content of the Jack Winter citation
link
