It’s bullshit that the opposite of “impeachable” is “unimpeachable” instead of “peachable”
These are called orphaned negatives and English has loads of them. A great article about them is here: https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2021/03/17/a-gruntled-look-at-orphan-negatives/
As a slight tangent, a similar peculiarity in English (which I don’t know of a name for) is where you can use the opposite words for similar actions, e.g. you can chop a tree down and then chop it up.
Reminds me of folding cardboard boxes. If you are taking a flat piece and make a box of it, are you folding a box or unfolding the cardboard. Or both. And when you do the reverse, you do the same, do you not?
Great link! I love the little story in there.
I actually use “shevelled” alongside many other words which to my mind “should logically exist” - for example, at the weekend I dismantled and then remantled a wall in my garden.
Good one, and you now have a mantled wall!
Contronyms is another great one. English is so tuitive.
Not exactly the same, but that also reminds me of autoantonyms or Janus words. The word dust can be used to describe adding dust or removing dust, for example.
Now do flammable!
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
Because im is not a typo of un
Impossible
Not to be rude but you meant to write: unpossible
How do you peach someone?
Carefully
Well you guys can peach me any day you’d like. 👄
🍑
u gotsed peached
It’s bullshit that the opposite of “important” is “unimportant” instead of “portant”
Should be exportant, obviously
disportn’t
disportn’t’ve
And “portant” to me sounds very similar to urgent which would make important a better negative / opposite.
I don’t hate it. Pretty gusting if you ask me.
I am demused. I can’t express my unappointment
The existence of “amused” implies the existence of “bimused”, “homomused”, “panmused” and possibly even more
I’m metromused
Reminds me of that Doofenschmirtz line: “Ah, Perry the Platypus… As always, your timing is impeckable. And by that I mean COMPLETELY PECKABLE!”
Don’t be surprised. Such quirks are unimpossible in English… /s
Peachy!
The most consistent thing about English is how inconsistent it is!
Which is to be expected when you have a Germanic language that is so heavily influenced by Latin languages.
Ehh, at least we don’t randomly assign every noun one of three genders, and have to memorize them all in order to use the correct form of “the” when speaking about it.
Just wait until you hear about declension
expeachable
Also, “gruntled” should be the opposite of “disgruntled”.
It is, check the OED.
Well I’ll be damned. I’ve used it as a word regardless, lol, but my spell check still hasn’t gotten the memo apparently.
I find this whole conversation whelming.
Stay whelmed.
So, would you say you’re more gruntled now?
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And something that has not been debunked is still bunk.
