A California caller is puzzled as to why the prefix un- seems to function in two entirely different ways in the terms undone and unmarried. This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
1 comment
More from this show
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
The roots of this way of using the prefix “un-" seem to go back to Germanic and Latin languages. The Dutch translation of the word “unthaw" is “ontdooien" but the prefix “ont-" has a double meaning in Dutch. It can mean “not", like the English “un-" as well as “to initiate an action" which is similar to the English prefixes “in-" and “en-" as used in “inflame", “inquire", “enlighten" and maybe also the “a" in “awake", “arise".
There are several other Dutch, German and French words in which the prefixes “ont/ent/en" are still used to indicate the initiation of an action:
– ontbijten (Dutch for to have breakfast): literally “start to bite"
– ontvlammen (Dutch), entflammen (German), enflammer (French): to inflame
– ontbranden (Dutch), entbrennen (German): to ignite
– ontstaan (Dutch), entstehen (German): to arise. Literally “to initiate to stand"
– ontsteken (Dutch): to enkindle
– ontwaken (Dutch): to awake