Gruntled

a vocab word that makes me chuffed. Or, yanno: gruntled.

Chuffed to bits, even.

‘WHY was I unaware of the fact that “disgruntled” is, in fact, the opposite of “gruntled”??

I’m actually not recalling if I did in fact know this or not, but I am glad to re(?)-know it now. Gruntled sounds like one of those words like crepuscular, or fecund, or cromulent, that sounds like it means something negative even though it doesn’t. But when I did a little more etymological rabbit-holing, guess what I found!

Anti-gruntled

Gruntled is what’s called a back-formation to the word disgruntled. I’ll explain:

It’s not that gruntled was a word first and the dis- was added later as an opposite. The whole word disgruntled came first, and the back-formation of gruntled was extracted from it, kind of as a wordplay joke, in the 1930s.

Let’s let the dictionary explain further. This is from Merriam-Webster, ‘Uncommon Opposites’ from the Word Matters podcast:

The word disgruntled dates to the late 1600s. So quite a long time before the word gruntled in its current incarnation was being used. But the dis- in that word was an intensifying prefix. It was not the undoing prefix or the negating prefix that we know and love. It was this intensifying prefix. The original meaning of the word gruntle, the old gruntle, the now archaic gruntle meant "to grumble." So to disgruntle was to emphatically grumble. So if you were disgruntled, you were internally seething, [experiencing] intensified grumbling, I guess, is what originally the idea of being disgruntled would mean.

And here, from a post about the word in r/etymology:

"Gruntle" was attested back to the 1500s as a verb meaning "to murmur or complain." When "disgruntled" was formed, it was in essence a way of saying that someone is "very gruntled." But over time, as "gruntle" fell out of fashion as a verb and "dis" became increasingly associated with its French root, we inadvertently formed "gruntled" as the complete antithesis to its original meaning.

~

So: gruntled started to not be used at all, and the meaning of disgruntled morphed into meaning: discouraged and annoyed. And so gruntled in its new meaning (pleased, happy) sprouted anew from that new meaning of the old word and…isn’t that just some nearly-biological-evolutionary cool nonsense? So the positive version came after the version with the prefix? Weird. Cool.

Which reminds me: Fritz Leiber always used ‘coolth’ in his Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories and I was always so charmed by this word. I mean, right? Why have warmth without coolth?

And then! just as I was gathering research and composing this ‘mess’ay,¹ what should come across my socials feed but this:

So according to this I’m-sure-totally-legit etymology meme, the suffix -le means, like, to continue, or do something repeatedly. Look at this list of words that TOTALLY MAKE SENSE now that you know that and look at them! The one that got me most was wrestle. Isn’t that just such a visceral word now that we know this? Did I look this up to verify if it’s true? I actually didn’t this time—I like this idea so much that I want it to be real. I need this, in this dismal world, okay?

…

Fine, fine; I’ll look it up, hang on 1 sec: … /types furiously into search engine//camera pans to Jenn’s face with computer screen-y columns of illegible info scrolling down it, the music intensifying the suspense/…

Yes! It’s not the only function of -le, but it is indeed one of them. And I know enough about English (hi, professor and amateur linguist nerd) that I can verify myself that the root words found on the list in the above image are indeed legit. Let me know if you need a transcription of it (or any of these images), and I’ll be happy to oblige. Everyone should enjoy this in all its detail.

Life is suffixing

What else in our messy chaotic language do we want to do this fun stuff with? Couth? Whelmed? Kempt? (Those don’t use dis- or -led, tho. But still!) Add your ideas in the comments, please and thank you. And. Can we all adopt coolth in this spirit at least? For me? That would make me gruntled.

1. Messay is a word coined by my writing coach who worked with me on my memoir: an essay without a clear structure other than, maybe, topic. Less neatly interwoven than a braided essay, a messay is more a chaos garden than a stout construct. But it’s still a tasty essay that’s fun to read. And if you’ve been following me here for a while at all, you’ll know that’s how I roll.