Katie from Mansfield, Texas, is curious about the term ruthless meaning merciless or having no remorse. In the 13th century, the word ruth meant the quality of being compassionate. Ruthless appeared in the language shortly thereafter, but the word ruth itself faded away. Linguists refer to such terms as unpaired words or missing opposites. Another example is disconsolate; although the word consolate was used centuries ago, it’s no longer used today. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ruthless and Ruth”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Katie, and I’m calling from Mansfield, Texas.
I had a question about the word ruthless.
I was watching 30 Rock, and Jack Donaghy said it’s a cruel, ruthless world.
And Kevin Parcell responded, no, it’s a ruth-filled world.
And so I was wondering about the opposite of ruthless, or maybe the root of the word, where it came from.
The root of ruthless, huh?
Ruthless meaning having no remorse or no sorrow, right?
Right.
Right, no mercy or that kind of thing.
Yeah, you know, there is an old, old word, Ruth.
We don’t hear it very much anymore, but it goes all the way back to the 13th century, and it referred to the quality of being compassionate and the feeling of sorrow for another person.
And, in fact, the root of ruthless shares a root with our word rue.
You know, like if you rue the day, you feel regret for the day.
Yeah, so it’s a kind of outer-directed kind of emotion.
And ruthless showed up shortly thereafter, shortly after Ruth entered the language, and that one stuck around.
But Ruth didn’t. Ruth just kind of faded away.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Right, it became a name. So, interesting.
Okay, yeah, I had no idea that there even was a Ruth word to begin with, even if it was 700 years ago.
We have a category for these words, by the way.
They’re called unpaired words or missing opposites, where there are a number of different terms in English that are like this, like disconsolate.
We never say that someone is consulate.
Right, or gruntled.
There is a word gruntled.
But it’s kind of a stunty gruntled you say just as a gag or joke.
But these unpaired words happen for a lot of different reasons, but in this case it’s the more common reason, which is the fading away of one of the pairs.
Just for some reason not used and becomes archaic or obsolete.
Although, Katie, it would be great to have a Ruth-filled world, wouldn’t it?
Oh, yes. I just picture, you know, the lakes and prairies filled with chocolate, and, you know, suddenly we have an animal diabetes problem or something.
I was thinking of—
Wait, oh, that kind of Ruth, like a baby Ruth?
I was thinking of like—
I was thinking of baby Ruth, yes, that is what comes to my mind.
I was thinking of like clones of Dr. Ruth and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, like populating the world.
Oh, see, you sound intellectual.
I just went straight for the chocolate.
I’m with you there, too.
Yeah.
Katie, thanks for your call.
That was so interesting.
Take care now.
Yes, thank you.
Cheers, bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
One of the other common reasons for these unpaired words to exist, like disconsolate, is that we borrowed from Latin or French or another language, but we only borrowed one of the pair, and we didn’t borrow the other one.
Disheveled is one of those.
We didn’t borrow what would be the equivalent of shoveled.
We only borrowed disheveled from French.
So we never even had the original matching sister word for it.
Yeah, and disheveled has hair in it, right?
Yeah, it’s something to do with your hair in disarray.
Basically, yeah.
Well, we know you’re wondering about a word or a phrase.
What is it?
We’d like to know.
Call us, 877-929-9673.
