Robin in Jacksonville, Florida, grew up using the word unthaw as in unthaw the frozen hamburger until someone told her that she should instead simply say thaw to mean “allow something frozen to come to room temperature.” Is it wrong to say unthaw? It’s less common and less formal than plain old thaw, but the word unthaw has been in use for at least four centuries. In the 1600s, the prefix un- was added as an emphasizer to several words, including the adjectives boundless, helpless, remorseless, and witless to form unboundless, unhelpful, unremorseless, and unwitless as a way of intensifying their meaning. Similarly, verbs such as ravel, peel, loosen can be rendered as unravel, unpeel, and unloosen. The point is that the prefix un- doesn’t always negate — sometimes it serves to emphasize. This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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