Does the Prefix “-un” Usually Mean a Reversal?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi. Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

Hello.

Hi. So, my name is Sarah. I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

And my call regards an oft-asked question here in Texas, which is, when you go to a restaurant and you order iced tea, the immediate question to follow is, sweet or unsweet?

And this has always been kind of a pet peeve of mine, maybe wrongly. I guess I’ll find out.

Because to me, I always thought, how can this tea be unsweet? I thought un meant an undoing or a reversal of some sort.

So to me, it just didn’t sound right when people would ask, do you want it sweet or unsweet? I would just think, do you want iced tea or do you want it sweetened iced tea?

Well, Sarah, what are your thoughts about which tastes better?

I’m not a sweet tea person growing up in Texas and I’m sure it’s more it’s prevalent in the south. It’s just too sweet for me. I don’t mind a little bit, but when they say sweet tea, they mean really sweet tea.

Oh yeah, it’s almost a syrupy.

Yes, yeah. So does it the unautomatically mean a reversal? Does it mean that a thing used to be sweet and we took the sweetness away?

That’s what you’re asking.

Yes, exactly.

Because in my mind, I think something’s been undone or, you know, unrolled or unfolded, whatever it is. And that means it previously was folded.

Yeah.

Yeah, that folded is a really good one to hang on to here because you can have something that was folded be unfolded. And you can have something.

But however, you can have things that are unbuilt that were never built. And you can have things that are unbelievable that were never believable.

And so particularly with adjectives, un doesn’t have to mean a reversal. It can simply mean not or the absence of a condition.

And so sometimes that un is about a comparison to expectations. So, for example, an unopened tomb, you know, T-O-M-B, was once open, but by comparisons to our expectations that tombs usually remain closed after their contents are put in, we consider it unopened.

Right?

Yeah.

If we call something an unopened door, it means we haven’t opened it yet, although circumstances might indicate that we will soon or should have already opened it.

Although obviously the door has been opened before, but right now we’re calling it unopened because people expect us or we expect ourselves to have opened this door or to soon have opened this door.

So it’s all about expectations here.

Yeah, so I was going to say that unopened actually, I just kind of had a light bulb and I thought, you know, when you buy something from a store, you expect it to be unopened. But it was previously opened.

Right.

It shouldn’t be open.

So the expectation is I see what you’re saying. That’s a really good point.

Yeah, so that is exactly where unsweetened tea fits in. By all expectations of southern gustatory habits, it should be sweetened. Therefore, when we call it unsweetened, we are indicating that unsweetened is the unusual condition and that sweetened is the usual one.

Okay.

So I can get rid of that pet peeve now, I guess.

Yeah, relax. Have a tall, cold glass of tea and relax. Put your feet up. Maybe a little fried chicken.

So it’s funny, though. Adjectives with on and verbs with on behave a little differently. With verbs, the on prefix is indeed almost always about a reversal, a reversal of condition.

So you have undo, untie, unpack, unfold, like you mentioned. And those are almost always about a thing that was that is no longer.

Okay. That makes sense. And I can finally put this to right.

Yeah. So it’s about expectations. What do we expect? The un-indicates that an expectation has been reversed.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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