here's a topic that has come up here not infrequently in the past. I was reminded of it today when I came across the phrase "stinting in the extreme" -- stinting is outGoogled by unstinting by nearly an order of magnitude.

but this isn't really why I've come here tonight. I'm wondering if we ever came up with a term for these "Words better known in their negative forms"? I'm not really looking for a neologism, just curious if there already exists a philological term for this.

Quinion has called extreme examples of these "unpaired words".
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/unpaired.htm

I'm not sure if there is such a word myself, tsuwm.

But, interesting as well, are words which express the negative, sometimes with considerable subtlety, without using the prefix "un".

In the political arena particularly, there are all kinds of terms we can use to cast the other side in a negative light, without directly or specifically criticizing the other side. Here's an example:

The problem with this debate is that the opponents to the originalists are labeled as "activist judges" by the right. Judges who seek to further their political agenda through interpretation of the federal and state constitutions. However, the right is equally activist in this regard. Let's unpack each of these terms a bit.

Now what about the term "activist"? The loaded term recalls images of war protesters, people throwing red paint on fur-clad ladies, Greenpeace, etc. I'm certainly not condemning these groups. But much of conservative and Middle-America doesn't understand activism. I grew up in conservative, Middle-America, where tradition is good and hippie protesters are bad. The term activist has a decidedly negative connotation for much of America. The term activist is thrown around like the term "bleeding-heart liberal" casting a very dark shadow on otherwise noble causes.

[Wikipedia: Originalism]
[Wikipedia: Activist]

Posted by Aaron Hall

http://snipurl.com/grxy

One would have thought that, if Quinion knew a word to describe the collection of words known (almost) entirely by their negative forms, he would have used it in the interesting article to which you link.

Stint, all by its lonesome, isn't all that rare. Three million googlits, even when you discount the various acronyms and mentions of the wading bird of the British Isles, is a reasonable number.

>if Quinion knew a word..

keyword here may be "if" -- Michael Quinion is, after all, just a "pro-am" philologist, not unlike our own Anu Garg.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/personal.htm

Michael Quinion is, after all, just a "pro-am" philologist

Quite true, tsuwm. There is no necessary co-relation between erudition and the ability to market one's intellectual output commercially. Still, the product would not endure if the quality was absent - an indirect endorsement for Quinion and Anu, both. [BTW I didn't know "Quinion" was a person until you mentioned his first name in your post today. I thought "Quinion" was a coinage playing on the word "Opinion".]

Speaking for myself, and giving a respectful nod to my critics, I freely acknowledge that if my limericks were any good I would have sold one by now. But I haven't.

Some people do crossword puzzles and some do "hogwash". I do limericks. [It's a new challenge for me since OEDILF.com started up and I'm still struggling with the technical challenges. Sometimes painfully obvious, I know. But it takes practice like other hobbies. It takes time and practice to get good at "Hogwash" as well, I assume.]

As you know, my limericks are now labelled as such in "Wordplay" to warn off the innocent. :)

Stinting sounded odd to me but I have heard "don't stint on" so the positive is in occasional use here but still in a negative phrase.

I recall the scene in Romeo and Juliet where the nurse goes on about an incident in Juliet's babyhood. Juliet had falen on her face and was crying, and the nurse's husband said "Did you fall on your face? You'll fall on your back when you get smarter, won't you?" and, in the nurse's words "The pretty thing, it stinted and said 'Aye'". So it's an old word.

We use "uncouth" now to mean "ignorant". There was a word in Old English, "uncuth" (where the "th" was an "eth", one of those crossed-d letters), meaning "unknown, unfamiliar", and its opposite number "cuth" meant "familiar and known".

Just for you, Elizabeth (though it might make a nice addition to Max's reference page):

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/oe/oe-fonts.html

Well I am embarrassed to have to confess that until I read the Quinion page I had not even realised that innocent was one othese words. What makes it worse is that I have been reading and using the word "nocent" quite a lot in the last few months, working with a nursing student. I never thought of putting the two together!

Was there a thread which drew together those words which are their own antonyms, like "cleave" and I suppose "raise/raze"????? I remember it as being quite recent....

jj

Thanks, AnnaS - I'll get my computer geek - aka husband - to install one of these for me!

johnjohn, I think there have been several threads on that topic; here's the oldest:
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=452

Jackie - yeah that's it, I knew that "stranger" tsuwm was involved, hehehe

I do limericks
Doing true limericks well is an arduous art form. While a form of light verse in effect, its generative process is usually anything but. For a usually casual subject it has a wickedly formidable prescriptive form. You might find the following link informative but decidedly unhelpful.
http://www.sfu.ca/~finley/discussion.html