It is something of an enigma how a man who could not bear to hurt a living thing could serve as defence secretary.Madeleine was still very much an enigma to him.But despite all the efforts to make sense of the artist, he remains elusive, an enigma.Can anyone help?", The Guardian – cites "Gloss" by David McCord and "A Dream of Couth" in The Game of Words by Willard R.From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English enigma e‧nig‧ma / ɪˈnɪɡmə / noun MYSTERIOUS someone or something that is strange and difficult to understand SYN mystery The neighbours regarded him as something of an enigma. I've searched for the poem since, but no luck. Semantic Enigmas: "I once read a nonsense poem that removed the apparently negative prefixes of words like 'inept', 'inert' and 'uncouth' to make new words: 'ept', 'ert' and 'couth'.Jack Winter, "How I Met My Wife", The New Yorker, July 25, 1994, p. 82, uses many unpaired words for humorous effect.Daily Mail: London pp. 42–43 – article on the topic, ending in a short poem "A Very Descript Man" using humorous opposites of unpaired words "The Mystery of The Vanished Positive" in Daily Mail, Annual for Boys and Girls, 1953, Ed. Brev Is the Soul of Wit, Ben Schott, The New York Times, April 19, 2010.Words with no opposite equivalent, posted by James Briggs on April 2, 2003, at The Phrase Finder."Absent antonyms" at 2Wheels: The Return.^ "Whelmen - Middle English Compendium".^ "What's Going On With 'Nonplussed'?".^ "Orphaned negative | Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - Credo Reference".^ Mind Your Words Master the Art of Learning and Teaching Vocabulary.Defective verb – other form of lexical gap.Untoward evolved from figurative alterations of toward involving deviation from norms toward acquired no similar figurative meanings. While unkempt extended to grooming and hygiene generally, combed did not undergo the same extension. Kempt was replaced by passive participle combed as comb replaced kemb. From Old English cunnan meaning "well-known" or "familiar". From Middle English whelmen meaning "to turn over". May mean "to moderately impress" in recent usage. Means "to turn upside down" or "to overcome in thought or feeling". Nonplussed is from Latin non plus, meaning "no more". Committal (noun) means "the process of sending someone to a mental institution". Inflammable is from Latin inflammare meaning "to cause to catch fire". From Latin flammare meaning "to catch fire". Inert is from Latin iners, meaning "without skill". Typically describes the abstract, such as a theory, rather than a person. Not attested, as something created with forethought. Gormless derives from gaumless, whose antonym gaumy is rare and highly region-specific.
To make rough, a similar connotation to exasperate's secondary meaning of increasing the intensity of pain. Disheveled is from Old French deschevelé. Discomfit probably includes some conflation with discomfort.įrom Latin gustāre meaning to taste antonym form appeared in Old French desgouster From Old French confit, from Latin confectum meaning "put together". Comfit (noun) is a candy comprising a sugar-coated nut or fruit. Disambiguate derives from dis- + ambigu(ous) + -ate in the mid-20th century There are a handful of notable examples in modern English. Such words – and particularly the back-formations, used as nonce words – find occasional use in wordplay, particularly light verse.
In some cases a paired word does exist, but is quite rare or archaic (no longer in general use). The classification of a word as "unpaired" can be problematic, as a word thought to be unattested might reappear in real-world usage or be created, for example, through humorous back-formation. Other unpaired words were never part of a pair their starting or ending phonemes, by accident, happen to match those of an existing morpheme, leading to a reinterpretation. Unpaired words can be the result of one of the words falling out of popular usage, or can be created when only one word of a pair is borrowed from another language, in either case yielding an accidental gap, specifically a morphological gap. If the prefix or suffix is negative, such as 'dis-' or -'less', the word can be called an orphaned negative. Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym, with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite. JSTOR ( January 2010) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Īn unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not.
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