Words without opposites

Noon every other Monday is the deadline for me to deliver this column to those newspapers which have the sense—good or bad, I can’t say—to print it. This Thursday is Christmas, but there is no holiday from deadlines for the folks who put out newspapers, even weekly ones. There will be a paper published this week, and it will be on time. And I have to fulfill my obligation to send in my column because some editors may be counting on it to take up space and some readers may be counting on it to take up time.

Unfortunately, I also have to think of something to write about, which this week seems to be very hard, indeed.

I do not want to subject anybody to a Christmas column on taxes, health insurance, car insurance, politics—partisan or non-partisan, or on any of my usual dreary topics. Nobody wants to read that kind of stuff on Christmas, and I am thankful for it, because I have honestly not been able to think of anything to write about along those lines.

I’m not going to write a column on Christmas, either, because there are plenty of other people out there in weekly newspaperland who will write one and will do a better job of it than I ever could.

What I will write about is something I have found curious for a long time: why are there some words that do not have similar words with opposite meanings? For instance, the opposite of unhappy is happy, but what is the opposite of disgruntled? When a person gets over being disgruntled, they should logically become “gruntled,” but instead they must become something else because there is no such word as “gruntled.”

If you are unhappy, you can become happy; if you are unpleasant you can become pleasant; but a disgruntled person cannot become “gruntled” even if they want to. I am not so sure that this doesn’t interfere with some constitutional right or another about freedom of speech that I might have.

I’ve written before of how my thoughts wander when I’m on a tractor or on a long road trip and this is one of the things I have thought about. Something you may be thinking about right now is that Elliott needs to stop thinking and turn on the car radio once in a while to fill up the space between his ears. And, if I had a car radio that worked, I promise you I would.

Instead, I wonder why I can never find an “ept” employee to hire. I sure have had my share of inept ones. If helium is an inert gas because it doesn’t combine with other chemical doohickeys, what are the “ert” gases? If I become nonplussed when someone does something totally unexpected, why can’t I be “plussed” the rest of the time?

See what I mean? Granted, this kind of concern is not up to the level of thinking about the mysteries of life, but it is one of the imponderables of the English language. However, that said, what are the “ponderables” of the English language?

If you can disrupt a meeting, why can’t you “rupt” one, too? If you can act in a nonchalant way, why can’t you do it in a “chalant” way? You may be dismayed with the topic of this column, but you can’t be “mayed” about it even if you want to be.

Well, I guess this is just something I’ll have to learn to live with. At least I’ve found out that these words are known as “negatives without positives”, and you’ve found out that I can have deep thoughts about shallow topics, so it’s not a total waste of time.  If you’re really curious about these words you can go to a site called http://www.rinkworks.com/words/negatives.shmtl and see plenty more of them. Or, you can go on a long road trip with a broken radio and conjure them up all by yourself.

Me, I’m going to get my radio fixed.

Merry Christmas.

Montana Viewpoint has been distributed to weekly newspapers throughout  Montana since 1992, and may be reprinted free of charge. Jim Elliott is a State Senator from Trout Creek in his 16th year of legislative service, and is chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee.