What unorphaned word should we bring back? Everyone been gruntled in the comments!

“I am not superstitious, but I am a little stitious” - Michael Scott, The Office

I have both myself used "Whelmed" in conversation and heard other people use it. It's honestly a fairly useful word

Irritate is not a orphaned negative. It comes from Latin’s iratus. Also for y’all learning Spanish and don’t understand what gustar really means, the negative is disgustar. Look familiar? It should because it’s disgust. So gustar is gust (gusto). Gustare in Latin means to taste, so gustar means to appeal to one’s sense of taste/preferences. The food disgust me. I don’t like the food. The food me gusta (gusts me). I like the food.

Couth is a word I use on a semi frequent basis. I still use it as a negative and positive. “That man has a lot of couth.” Usually meaning “class, manners, and honor” all rolled into one. I also say “He has no couth!!” Meaning someone who has no class, manners, or honor.”

Irritated isn't an orphaned negative. It's an adjective derived from "iratus", Latin for angry.

Many of these affixless versions of orphans actually exist, but are obsolete or archaic. Whelm is one of these, and means the same as overwhelm. Noxious is the opposite of innocuous, both from Lat nocere, to harm.

I think it's worth pointing out that some words do have close relative opposites that simply have a slightly different form. The simplest one I always think of is inept => apt. However, your video had me thinking about innocuous and how innocuous without the prefix is similar to noxious which happens to have the opposite meaning. So, I dug into the etymology, and it appears that inocuus and noxius both existed in Latin, and both derived from nocere (to harm), so that they were, in the time of the Romans, much like inept and apt are to us today. Thankfully, they have both survived. We're just further away from the time when their relationship would have been less perplexing.

The word "Limey" should be used more often as slang for a British person. As an American, I'm fine with being called a Yank. -Dave the Bloody Yank

Fun fact: In Polish, the word "nienawidzić" (meaning: to hate) is actually an orphaned negative. It's derived from the prefix nie- (that negates the meaning of the stem) and the word "nawidzić". The word "nawidzić" last existed in Old Polish, but the negated form still exists in Modern Polish.

The prefix in “Twilight” reminds me of the end of “Betwixt” (an archaic form of between). So, it sort of makes sense for the time between light and no light is called “between-light”

the German «Weise» is pronounced roughly like "visor" is in your accent. as for examples of orphaned words in German: «harmlos» means, well, "harmless" - but the word «Harm» is at best extremely archaic in German and will probably only understood intuitively by people who are familiar with the English word; also we do not have an equivalent to "harmful" (as in, we use different words for that) another example is that «vergessen» means "to forget" but we have no cognate of "get" alone; «-gessen» also appears in the past participle of «essen» ("to eat") but that is afaik etymologically unrelated and just there bc «gegessen» sounds better than -«geessen»- also i think "untoward" isn't "un-" + "toward" but "unto" + "-ward" which means the "un-" isn't even a negative but a variant of "on"

I was very whelmed while watching Young Justice.

I remember a joke from Caddicarus, where Caddy says he feels the opposite of "disgruntled", then follows it and a pause with "I'm... 'gruntled'." One of my favorite grammar-related jokes from his videos.

Orphaned negatives brought me back to the word *negative* which I believe is a false orphaned negative onto itself. At least in the Croatian version of it. In Croatian, ''ne'' means ''no'', and negatives are most often formed with the prefix of ''ne''. ''Nedovoljan'' means ''infufficient'', and ''dovoljan'' means ''sufficient''. ''Nespretan'' means ''clumsy'', and ''spretan'' means ''agile''. Thus, in Croatian, it might appear that the very word ''negativan'' (negative) has a pair of ''gativan'', meaning something like ''positive'' or ''happy''. However... ''gativan'' doesn't exist and never existed, because ''ne'' in ''negativan'' isn't a prefix, but a foreign word adapted into the language. I wonder how many more examples like that various languages have. But we actually *do* have a couple of orphaned negatives of our own with the prefix of ''ne''. There is a word ''nestašan'', which means ''mischivieous'', and is usually used for kids (and sometimes adults) who are mildly misbehaving, but still in a somewhat charming and harmless way. Using the logic I mentioned above, one would assume that ''stašan'' means something like ''calm'' or ''well-behaved'', but no... ''stašan'' doesn't mean anything, and based on everything I know, it never did.

You know, I always wondered why 'uncouth' existed when 'couth' isn't a word in of itself. It was the only orphan negative that I noticed. This video made me feel very gruntled!

If you count anyone who has lost both parents _at any age_ as an orphan, then most of us become orphans eventually - I'm 72, but not yet orphaned (Hi, Dad!)

The existence of the words "happy", "merry" and "jolly" implies the existence of the words "happ", "merr" and "joll" - at least we know that "joll" is ultimately derived from the French "jolie" but what about "happ"?

In Finnish, orphan is "orpo". It's quite interesting that our prime minister's name is Petteri Orpo.

"Stay Whelmed and feel the Aster" - Robin, Young Justice.

I've always wondered if the same process happened with some current words with the less suffix such as gormless, ruthless, listless and feckless as we don't have the words gorm,ruth,list and feck with the same definitions any more.

Probably a bit before your time Patrick, but there was a very popular British comedian called Frankie Howerd who was fond of saying when he was surprised about something; 'My flabber has never been so ghasted!' Always made us laugh as kids in the 1970s. Not quite the same, but related, I think.

To be fair, the suffix "chalant" nonchalant comes from an old french term "achalant" which means annoying or whiny. "Achaller" means to bug someone

In Spanish, the word "nudo", meaning "naked", always has the prefix "des-", because the other word "nudo" means "knot". They are distinct in Latin (nūdus, nōdus) and French (nu, nœud), so if you say «disnu» or «dénu» in French it sounds funny.

The DC animated series 'Young Justice' plays around with these a lot. I think it started in an episode where Robin was talking about how people can be underwhelmed and overwhelmed, but not just whelmed. After that, the team starts using the words whelming and whelmed, every chance they get.

I'm not dismayed - I'm mayed . . .

In Italian there is the verb " nuocere" that means to be damaging. While the abjective "nocuo" is not used its antinonym has survivedb as 'innocuo".

You explained this concept impeccably.

Thanks for the Cranberry morphemes explanation. "Cran" is an outdated term for "Crane", just like "cobweb" the "cob" is an outdated term for "spider." In "coleslaw", "cole" means "cabbage" And don't forget the "pea" in "peacock" and "peahen." With KFC, the reason it's officially NOT Kentucky Fried Chicken is because the Commonwealth of Kentucky started demanding royalties for use of "Kentucky." So the company offficially became KFC. In Quebec, where it was "Pulet Frit Kentucky", it's now just "PFK"

So, “presume” means to suppose before knowing, that means that “sume” would mean to know and “postsume” would mean to draw wider conclusions after knowing

Thank you Name Explain. This video has left me thoroughly whelmed.

Other examples of words that use the dis- prefix as an intensifier (or which came from an intensifier) and not a negative are disturb, distend, and discussion. A cool one is dispose, which has two main meanings (among several other related ones): to get rid of, or to be brought to do something (as in "this medicine disposes me to sleep"). It could be analyzed as a negation of "pose" from Latin meaning put (like I "un-put" something or get rid of it), or an intensifier of putting something somewhere. So even though the prefix has two, essentially opposite meanings, they both come from the same Latin source.

I’ve always found the word ‘evitable’ (meaning can be prevented) interesting. It is such an uncommon word that most people probably haven’t heard of it, whereas ‘inevitable’ is an everyday word. Not sure if it counts as an orphaned negative, but I find it interesting.

This video properly whelmed me

IR in IRRITATED is not a prefix. Source: I speak portuguese, and we have the verb "Irritar" meaning 'to bother'/'to cause one to be angry' (well, 'to irritate') So the IR part of the word it's from the same Latin radical

Actually chalant is a word in the dictionary - listed as the opposite of nonchalant… And I would put the origin of disgruntled in the same category as inflammable - as likely related to extracting a “grunt”. Innocuous does have a related opposite - noxious, it just as a variant spelling.

I have a secondary interpretation of "Untoward" Instead of assuming it being an affixed "toward" perhaps it is more of a compound word of unto and ward. Unto being, well, "on to" and ward being in direction of.

We do also have some orphan negatives in French. One that comes to mind is "inquiet" meaning 'worried'. Here if we remove the 'in' which usually negates word we get "quiet" which is not a word in French. The best part is when we take the noun form, it is no longer an orphan negative! "Inquiétude" means 'a state of being worried' while "quiétude" does mean 'a state of peace of mind', but it is seldom used and is considered as an old way to speak/write. I believe it is the same with "quiet", where it used to be an adjective meaning 'not worried' but that has been completely stopped being used, I think it is also the etymology of the English 'quiet' meaning not emitting noise, being peaceful. I find it funny how French kept one half while English kept the other half.

off-putting is a hyphenated adjective of the phrasal verb "to put off". calling it orphaned is like calling phrasal verbs orphaned

"AAAAAAH Perry the Platypus! Your timing is impeccable. And when I say impeccable, I mean COMPLETELY PECCABLE!"

I would say that furled is a word , meaning rolled up.

Really entertaining video! 😊 One of my favourite orphaned negatives is impromptu, meaning unplanned. This video definitely had an air of promptu about it! 😂 Thanks, Patrick! 😊

I would argue that "whelmed" and "cuth/cooth" are words. Just because something isn't directly in a dictionary it doesn't mean it's not a "real word".

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" "I think you can in Europe."

Ive heard quite a few of these over the years. Cutting away the under/over from whelmed seems rational when you can't think of another word, and if everyone will understand what you mean why not

Swedish has a lot of these. The Swedish word for word is "ord", and the un- prefix is o-, so these "unwords" are "oord". But there's the thing about removing the prefix and getting something that should be the opposite when it isn't. These are "ununwords", or "ooord' (pronounced with three distinct o). Some words: oförskämd (unashamed) - förskämd (corrupted/ruined/spoiled) odjur (beast/monster) - djur (animal) oskuld (virgin) - skuld (debt) olycka (accident) - lycka (fortune/luck) ovett (reproach/blame) - vett (behave/civilised) oväder (bad weather) - väder (weather) oljud (noise) - ljud (sound) otäck (unpleasant/frightening) - täck (to cover) otymplig (unwieldy) - tymplig (---) ofantlig (immense) - fantlig (---) odåga (rascal) - dåga (---) ohyra (pest) - hyra (rent) olympiska spelen (olympic games) - lympiska spelen (---) orolig (worried) - rolig (funny) You can probably see how they came to be by logic. Bad weather is "umweather", a beast is an "unanimal", and such. But they've changed meaning over time. Some actually comes from opposite where "täck" meant beautiful and nice, but it's not used today.

I’m a pilot and one of our standard emergency procedures is for “Inadvertent IMC” (IMC is Instrument Meteorological Conditions, when you can’t see outside the plane and have to rely on instruments). After memorizing the procedure and thinking about it a while it occurred to me that the word Inadvertent would imply the existence of the word Advertant, which I nor anyone else I worked with had ever been aware of before. It apparently does exist, having looked it up later, but it is so much less commonly used that it might as well not exist anymore.

I've been whelmed by this video. Thank you for that!

I had been thinking about this very topic just recently. Thank you!

I don't know if this works, but when you explained orphaned negatives, what came to my mind were the words 'object', 'subject', 'inject', 'reject'

6:20 Dude, I was literally sitting on the toilet when you said this...and it was by complete coincidence because I happened to need the toilet while I was watching this video....

one of my favourites is "important". "portant" isn't a word but to get the opposite of "important" we add another prefix to get "unimportant"

Funny, but I don't think of off as a prefix in off-putting. It's more just a word order reversal from put off.

10:30 I initially guessed Crayola would share 'cray' with crayfish. But one derives from a word for chalk and the other from a word for crab. It's fairly close considering chalk is made from shells of tiny sea-creatures and crabs are sea-creatures with shells.

2:07 We have those in Polish too. The verb "nienawidzić" (to hate) is an orphaned word bc nawidzić meant something simmilar to love and the nie suffix means it's negative. Literally. Nawidzić fell out of use and now we're stuck with this awkward double nie every time we want to say "I don't hate [blank]" "Ja nie nienawidzę [blank]"

overwhelming just comes from "whelming over", just like throwing over is overthrowing, or looking over is overlooking. but since "whelming" (meaning "engulfing" or "overcoming") is not used nearly as much now, "overwhelming" gets reanalysed to have the "over-" prefix, like "overstate" or "overcooked". so since you can also say "understate" and "undercooked", then people thought you can say "underwhelming". however, "whelming under" is nonsensical. you can't say "the waves whelmed UNDER the ship". it is a reasonable thing to think, though.

The Young Justice/Name Explain crossover we definitely needed

I as a foreigner who reads a lot of old books sometimes actually use words like “couth” because I inferred their meaning from the orphaned word and I use it being unaware that the word is not in use anymore. Because to an ignorant foreigner it makes sense if a brute is “uncouth” than a noble prince must be “couth”.

We can see "whelm" in 19th century use, but it fell out after that: the hymn "My Hope Is Built" has the couplet "His oath, his covenant, his blood / Support me in the *whelming* flood" (where it has, effectively, the same meaning as "overwhelm").

This video is so relevant. My siblings and I were joking all week about if our actions were nonchalant or chalant. Like "Geez, you are being so chalant right now"

I am very whelmed with this video, thanks.

I and my family often use “whelmed” and I have heard a few other people use it too. We also use “ruth” as in “ruthless” in the context of someone doing something carefully, or we also say “that person lacks ruth”

I looked up disgruntled in Wiktionary and it said that on occasion, the prefix "dis" can serve to intensify the word it modifies. Another example they provided is disannul, which means to annul. This could be similar to how inflammable means flammable, instead of not flammable, like many other uses of in-. So basically, disgruntled just means "very grunty", ie complaining a lot.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. The word "grunt" has been commonly used all of my life. It's a word that we use to describe the noise that people make when they are struggling. Normally when someone is lifting a heavy thing. I assumed that "Disgruntled" came from that.

This video left me feeling very whelmed and gruntled Thank you😂❤🙂

I only just started this video - I'm into linguistics and etymology - but just for the shoutout to people who became orphans *at any age* - thank you. I lost my mom when I was 17 and my dad became an alcoholic after that. It sucked, even though I was almost all "grown up", so the "at any age" really resonated. I'll post a comment at the end, but I'm sure the video will be great!

Whelm, to be engulfed in a surge of water, is hanging on by its fingernails because the English version of Dungeons and Dragons uses it to describe an attack by a water elemental. I’ve never heard it used in the metaphorical sense of the negatives though - and it’s already pretty similar to the meaning of overwhelmed…

this kind of stuff keeps me up at night

This video has left me gruntled. I was pleasantly whelmed.

I am gruntled that this video whelmed me. I expected no more and no less.

This explains why in Finnic and Baltic languages ​​the word is "orpo" or similar, while elsewhere it is more like "orphan" or similar.

Doesn't irritate come from ire : fire in Latin?

I feel whelmed by this video. Thank you.

How amazingly ept you are!

The video is tressing, had me feeling good and gruntled.

Orphaned initialisms are interesting, IBM is still International Business Machines company but DVD, MTV, and computer terms like JPG their long name is no longer mentioned by people, I only see people explain those long names on TikTok videos.

the "Twi" in twilight does mean something though it's just straight up the number two, but an older version it's the same thing in german Zwielicht

The "Twi-" part in "Twilight" isn't a morpheme that doesn't appear elsewhere. In fact, the morpheme is the same as in the widely used words "Twig" and "Two" with the greater meaning of something being split or ambiguous. Just like twilight isn't completely light but it's also not completely dark. It's a split between those two.

About the word Twilight, we have the same word in German "Zwielicht" and both literally mean "Two-light", with twi, just being another from of two, which isn't that weird, regarding German has at least 4 versions of two that I know of in dialects, being zwie, zwee, zwo and Zwei, but to get to the point, twilight refers to the time between night and day, and I think it refers to there being for a time 2 light sources on the sky; the moon and the sun. Theoretical, if we had a 2nd moon, or sun, we could even have a Trilight lol

This happens in Portuguese for the word “Desapontado” (disappointed) in the meaning of unsatisfied. Yes, there is the word “Apontado”, but it could never mean “satisfied”. Furthermore, they are hardly used as mere antonyms, I believe the same goes for English

Couth is absolutely a word that people use even in modern times if they want to sound hoity toity, myself included.

Ah Perry the Platypus, your timing is impeccable

Twi in Twilight DOES come from a specific prefix morpheme. Specifically it's a portmanteau of Twixt and Light. It comes from "Between the Light" shortened from "The time between the daylight and the night." Which then had the "and the night" left off, since it was pretty understood (what other time would the light be on one side of but the night/dark). Then we started to contract words a lot more getting "between" becoming betwixt. So "The time betwixt the light." Of course, that's kinda long when you're saying when you'll be meeting someone somewhere or hosting a party, or something is happening so maybe just "betwixt the light," then you get the contraction: 'twixt the light. From there we often leave off articles when it's a really common phrase: 'twixtlight. Then dropping the extra syllable so it makes an Iamb instead of a Phyrrus because english doesn't like double-stressed syllables when not making exclamations. That gives: 'twi'light. After a few hundred years of using it we left off the apostrophes and it just became "twilight." Still a correct spelling would still be 'twi'light if you wanted to be extra or show the old form of the word!

Twi in Twilight comes from Tweone, meaning "in 2s". This is because there are twilight once in the morning and once in the evening, dawn and dusk.

I’ll be back in a few centuries to hear you explain how words like “couth,” “gruntled,” and “chalant” are actually derived from their negatives.

I love gruntled, I'm going to start using it.

Filing this away for fantasy language construction. "Oh, that word changed meaning in the common tongue, it has a root in this one instead."

I feel that some of these orphaned negatives, such as the "whelmed" in "overwhelmed", are being used more frequently. Especially online. I think this is partially due to the mixing of cultures and languages online, where non-native English speakers assume the general English negative rules apply to Orphaned negatives when they don't, but it becomes popular enough online to where a large segment of native English speakers begin using it back home.

"Can something be just plain 'couth?' I bet strong sad is just plain couth."

I actually use gruntled by itself with the meaning of "a bit unhappy/displeased" (so I would say "Oh, that dog's just a little gruntled" mean "Oh, that dog's just a little upset"). But I also speak a New England American accent which are bit different than other American accents

The Australian comedy band Tripod created a song all about orphaned words. It's called "Kempt". I highly recommend.

7:30 - and finally we get the reveal. I have been waiting for this since a certain Strong Bad Email.

The "twi" in "twilight" may come from the largely out of fashion "betwixt", as it occurs betwixt day and night. Also, many of the words mentioned aren't orphaned negatives (also known as lost positives), but in fact come directly from another language. Also, the "dis" in disgruntled comes from a mostly unused meaning of the prefix, which is to heighten or intensify an unpleasant expression.

After watching this video I was both gruntled and whelmed. 😊

In the US KFC still uses Kentucky Fried Chicken branding on all their packaging.

this video is so gusting! i felt traught while watching.

7:40 Actually couth is a fairly standard word in Scots. I think it was in Middle English too.

6:13 that tiny smile is HILARIOUS xD

From wiktionary cran is Old English for crane (the bird) and has an entry for the Yola word krannberry (crane+berry) meaning gooseberry. It is likely that cran+berry is similarly derived but not meaning gooseberry. Also from wiktionary, crayfish is derived from the Old French word "crevice", with the cre/cray part deriving from the Frankish word for crab (*krebitja). Thus, the word crayfish means "crab fish".

Honestly, I am gruntled that this video has left me completely whelmed.