Words Without Antonyms

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Dave Copeland calling from Boulder City, Nevada.

Hi, Dave. How are you doing?

Hi, Dave.

Welcome to the show.

Doing really good. Well, thank you.

I’m just sitting here with my driving partner here, Lulu, 80-pound Doberman.

But we’re driving up from our regular run on Thursday up from Calexico back up to Las Vegas.

And I heard you say about a passage from literature that was memorable.

And I remember something from Oscar Wilde when he said, in one of his plays, he was talking about one of the characters.

She was not disgruntled, but she was far from gruntled, which struck me funny.

And how there are certain quirks of our language that you only use words with a prefix, like disgruntled and impeccable, something like.

My favorite is overwhelmed.

People are always overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but they’re never whelmed.

Whelmed.

I bet whelmed is a word.

I bet if we look it up, we’ll find it.

It’s not that common.

Yeah.

Yeah, and same for gruntled, actually.

I mean, disgruntled was around a lot longer, but probably in the 1920s or so.

That’s the earliest use I’ve seen of gruntled, meaning happy.

It’s one of those conversation stoppers, though.

I mean, you wouldn’t wish anybody a gruntled birthday.

You’d probably get punched.

I’ve heard whelmed used, but it’s kind of a West Virginianism.

Oh, yeah?

That’s what my father-in-law would say.

He’d say, whimmelated.

If you overexert it, you whimmelate yourself.

That’s nice.

I don’t know if that’s too whelmed or not, but it’s hilarious.

I like that.

Whimmelated.

I’ve never heard it, but that’s a good one.

I’m writing it down now.

Whimmelated.

Yeah.

Well, that goes to James Howler.

There are a lot of these words in English.

They’re called unpaired words where we, for some reason, don’t have the antonym.

Maybe we had it once, and it has fallen out of use, or maybe it never existed.

So disgruntled and gruntled are kind of that.

Whelmed and overwhelmed are kind of that.

Yeah, it looks like whelm originally meant to overturn or capsize.

So if you’re overwhelmed, that’s probably an intensifier as well.

Dave, you sound like the reading sort.

I want to recommend an article for you in The New Yorker.

It’s called How I Met My Wife.

It’s by Jack Winter from July 1994.

And the whole thing is a story in which he uses unpaired words.

It’s kind of, I’ll leave it to you to find it.

It’s called How I Met My Wife, New Yorker.

Just Google that and you’ll find it, all right?

Very good.

Thanks for calling and give Lulu a kiss for us, will you?

A big slobbery one.

She has, you know, she really could use a breath mint.

Well, a scratch behind the ear then.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Drive safely.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There’s a similar work by J.H. Parker from the 1940s.

I believe this first appeared in Collier’s magazine where he uses a bunch of these unpaired words.

Do you want to hear a stanza of this?

Oh, yeah.

I love this stuff.

It’s called A Very Descript Man.

I am such a dolent man.

I aptly work each day.

My acts are all basilic.

I’ve just aim things to say.

I just what?

Aim things.

Instead of inane, he’s got aim things.

Oh, aim things.

And you can find that, too, with a little bit of Googling.

It’s called A Very Descript Man by J.H. Parker.

Oh, very interesting.

And it’s interesting, too, that a lot of those words do exist.

I mean, there is the word kemped, which is related to the word comb.

So if you’re kemped, then you’re well combed.

But the unkempt is much more common.

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