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stranger
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This week's theme brought to mind a list some British friends kept of words which implied a counterpart, but where the original was not generally in use.
I believe it started with gormless - what is a "gorm"?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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From the Middle English gome 'notice' < from Old Norse gaumr 'heed, attention' ( link, link, & link).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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stranger
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Okay. I wonder can we start it back up: "Johnny was gormy when the blond walked by."?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hello brave Margot. Is there much else in this than taking a word ending with -less and then taking the the first part of it adding a -y ? I just try to think... I mean, are there more possibilities than just adding or dropping suffixes?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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as shown by the following, that's the easy route:
I know a little man both ept and ert.
An intro-? extro-? No, he's just a vert.
Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,
His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.
When life turns sipid and the mind is traught,
The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.
Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,
My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.
Gloss, by David McCord
The Oxford Book of American Light Verse
[where would you begin, in any wise‽]
Last edited by tsuwm; 05/04/09 08:33 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I (very) recently did a theme week on lost positives (or not); since it's not inapt, I'll post some here.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) "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 "Is sheveled the opposite of disheveled? Recreational linguists call these words lost positives." - Charles Elster, What in the Word? (2005) ___ you never know how a prefix is going to affect 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. link
Last edited by tsuwm; 05/04/09 08:50 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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fwiw, here's a link to the previously cited New Yorker article: link
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stranger
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stranger
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I remember the delight when I first encountered this device in Samuel Beckett's *Watt* where the attempt to 'eff the ineffable' seemed to be integral to Beckett's work, while at the very same moment he despaired of being able to communicate anything effectively. To eff or not?
I always wondered if there was also a reference to the 'F-word' here... Does anyone know when that became common usage?
Last edited by shelleyp; 05/05/09 05:36 AM.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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So what was the pre-aphesized version of sheveled?
Hi Shelley, I don't know when it became common but it's too common now for my ear.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Apt, but sham, tsuwm. There is no such word in the Wwftd-list. No sheveled and no disheveled and I can't find it anywhere. The OneLook collection gives nothing on it. Only shoveled and that one I know. ( but funny articles and verse, these.. )
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