Lori from North Georgia asks whether a person with a sloppy appearance is unkempt or unkept. Unkept is a word for things not preserved or retained such as an unkept promise or an unkept house, but a person who looks disheveled is far more commonly described as unkempt, from the past participle of Middle English kemben, “to comb.” Disheveled is related to the French cheveux, “hair,” and originally referred to disorderly hair or no hair at all; unkept can also be a pronunciation slip caused by the consonant cluster in unkempt. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Unkempt Describes Disheveled Appearance; Unkept Describes Neglect”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Lori. I’m calling from North Georgia.
Hi, Lori. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Lori.
Thank you.
Hi.
What’s up?
Now, this is a long-standing discussion. Is there a difference in the words unkempt and unkept?
Unkempt and unkept.
All right, so you said this was a long-standing question. Are you arguing with someone about this?
Yeah, how long is it?
Well, not really arguing. Our whole family, we love words. We love books. And we’re always, you know, noticing different words and things.
And years ago, I said something about a person, and I said, they look very unkempt. And my husband said, that’s not how you say it. It’s unkept. I said, no, it’s unkempt. And because I always thought that unkempt was how you keep a room. It’s how you describe a thing. And unkempt, with the M in it, is describing a person.
-huh.
And what does someone who’s unkempt look like, Lori?
Oh, sort of like they’ve been, you know, sleeping in the bushes and their hair’s a mess. And maybe they didn’t fix it this morning and they’re just very, very disheveled.
Aha. Aha. And Lori, you are absolutely right. In fact, it’s the word that I would use to describe someone who has a bad case of bedhead and just maybe looks like they got dressed in the dark or something. But I mean, it is true that unkept is a word. You might talk about an unkept promise or, as you were saying, it is often used in terms of housekeeping, you know, an unkept house.
But far and away, the word that you would use to describe somebody, especially who is disheveled, and I’ll get back to that in a second, would be the word unkempt. It actually comes from the past participle of a Middle English word, kemben, that means comb. So somebody who’s unkempt literally looks uncombed.
No way. That’s cool.
Yes. How cool is that? Yes, it’s etymologically related to the word comb. And the other thing that’s super cool, I love that we’re talking about the term disheveled, because people who know French might know that it has to do with the French word for hair, cheveux. And disheveled means to have disorderly hair or to have no hair at all.
How cool is it in its most literal sense?
That’s a really neat connection there. And also, I didn’t know if you had no hair at all that you could even be disheveled. But that’s interesting.
Yeah, how about that?
So, I mean, you’re both right that each of those words is a word, but far and away the word that you’re going to use if somebody is just looking like a mess is going to be unkempt.
Well, that’s great that I get to be right.
I love it.
Well, congratulations then.
All right. Well, thank you very much for answering this.
Sure. Thanks for calling.
Take care, Lori.
You’re welcome. Bye-bye.
I do see here that unkept has been used in place of unkempt as far back as the mid-1800s. As you said, Martha, you keep a house, so why can’t you have an unkept house? It just makes sense to a lot of people.
But, you know, there’s a phonological thing happening there, too. That consonant cluster in the middle, that MPT, sometimes makes unkempt sound like unkept because it’s just hard to say those three consonants together. So sometimes when you hear unkept, they meant to say unkempt. It just came out wrong.
True.
Yeah, it’s a consonant collision there.
Yeah.
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