Word weirdness

[JRTomlin]

I just noticed that unloosened means the same as loosened. 

[RCoots]

 

You're right!

Go home English language, you're drunk! And don't mug any other languages for grammar on the way!

[guest215]

   That's a good one.

[Post-Doctorate D]

If you loosen something, you're just loosening it.  If you unloosen it, you're really loosening it.

Un- as a prefix usually means to undo, free or remove something but there's a rarer usage where it's an intensifier.  So to unloosen is an intensified loosening of something.  So it means the same thing but not precisely the same thing except over time it has come to mean the same thing, likely due to writers pulling out the thesaurus to avoid repetition.  "I just used loosen, what can I use to not sound repetitive?  Oh, here it is.  Unloosen!"

Silly writers.  No respect for accurate word meanings.

[JRTomlin]

Oh, I don't know. I had a man unloosen the reins which meant to take them completely loose. I'm not sure how they could get any more unloosened than that. 


I still think it's a bit of word weirdness.

[Becca Mills]

Y'all are way ahead of me. I didn't even know "unloosened" was a word. 

[JRTomlin]

I was bitten by a novel by Alexandre Dumas at an early age and have suffered from weird-worditis ever since. 

[RCoots]

I was bitten by a novel by Alexandre Dumas at an early age and have suffered from weird-worditis ever since. 

weird-worditis? I think I may have the opposite. I used to have a quiet contest going with a classmate as to who had read more of the DICTIONARY.

Of course, I also do silly things like put 'cognizate' in a story and think it may actually be a word.

[idontknowyet]

I was bitten by a novel by Alexandre Dumas at an early age and have suffered from weird-worditis ever since. 

weird-worditis? I think I may have the opposite. I used to have a quiet contest going with a classmate as to who had read more of the DICTIONARY.

Of course, I also do silly things like put 'cognizate' in a story and think it may actually be a word.

Spelling is not my thing but I auto corrected cognizate in my head to cognizant.

[JRTomlin]

I remember well some years ago on a forum where I occasionally posted bits of a story for comment being taken to task for using fillip and being told it was a word no one knew. 

[RCoots]

I remember well some years ago on a forum where I occasionally posted bits of a story for comment being taken to task for using fillip and being told it was a word no one knew. 

/headesk

That reminds me of the sample edit I gave out when I was looking for copy editors. I had a word in there (don't remember what it was now) that is rather archaic. One editor 'corrected' the spelling into something completely different. Another said 'Hey, I learned a new word today, cool!"

Speaking of cool, did you know coolth is a word? It boggles me.

[JRTomlin]

 :clap :clap :clap Coolth really is a new word to me. Great one.

[Cathleen]

With me the word that bugs me is "invaluable." I can't use it. It means extremely valuable, but it's structured like it means the exact opposite. The discrepancy is distressing enough that other than this post, I don't think I've ever typed the word.

So weird words can give me odd writer's scruples.

[TimothyEllis]

Unloosen means to tighten back up. 

[Michelle Louring]

With me the word that bugs me is "invaluable." I can't use it. It means extremely valuable, but it's structured like it means the exact opposite. The discrepancy is distressing enough that other than this post, I don't think I've ever typed the word.

I never thought about that, but now you pointed it out, you might have ruined the word for me as well 

[Cathleen]

Sorry, Michelle--perhaps this word will make partial amends. I actually like cleave, since it means both to split apart and to cling to, depending on context. But that's a meaning thing, not that its structure is faulty. For some reason, that matters. I have no idea what this says about me, other than my readers will never have to deal with "invaluable."

[guest215]

To "pants" someone and to "de-pants" them is the same thing.