21st century tech vindicates an 18th century underdog. [D.R.H.]
When full dictionaries began to be made, their compilers discovered that the list of un- words possible in English is almost as big as the language. Many of them are perfectly valid and perfectly unneeded. They never have formed a part of the vocabulary. They stand stacked and ready and unused in its cellar.
dear Doug your post is not unread :3
I am left unsad, so to say with nothing unsaid.
This article is unbelievable. That is, unbelievably interesting!
The words uncouth implies
not , or without, couth.
hence without knowing what behaviour or characteristic is being addressed I have lived in fear of not being couth,.
I have also been tormented by underpants, - what does derpants mean? Is being without, or not derpants something that should be avoided or unavoided; could they be unborrowed , or unforgiving., or does it refer to the Cheyne-Stokes breathing pattern?
This article UN-sucks. As in, it doesn’t suck. ( I know UN-sucks is not a word.)
Thanks for the helpful article!!!
Personally, I think the use of “un-” has become more of a grammatical role than any other prefix signifying a negative sense (“in-”, “dis-”, “mis-”, etc.)
What I mean is that you can easily put “un-” with a hyphen before another adjective or past participle, and it will perfectly make sense ever more than those other prefixes above (of course, with Adj or V(/N) accordingly, but still not as generalised). It does not need to be “thoroughly” listed — we study a language by following patterns, not by listing every case scenario as “exceptions” (and I think you are right, it would be countless).
A few representative cases of such words will really be enough, and it really reminds me of the genitive case “-‘s” — you can make every noun genitive in this way and it serves no use to a learner at all.
Last but not least, thanks for the article. Very useful and well said.