{"id":4454,"date":"2013-11-29T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-29T13:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/?p=4454"},"modified":"2026-01-15T18:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T18:13:19","slug":"when-was-the-last-time-you-were-gruntled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/?p=4454","title":{"rendered":"When was the last time you were “gruntled?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading an article on the Mental Floss site – 12 Lonely Negative Words.<\/a> It’s a fascinating discussion of why we can be “disgruntled,” for example, but we can never be “gruntled.” If you read the article, please read the comments. They are a wonderful discussion of the curiosities of the English language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The un – obversive side – tricky<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\nOne of my favourite lessons, when I taught High School English, was to take a base word from Latin and add a number of latin prepositions to it. (Well I liked the lesson, maybe the kids didn’t that much.) For example, I would take the word “versus” (verse) meaning, to turn and we would begin creating a list of words based on variations of that meaning, such as:<\/p>\n

adverse, averse, converse, traverse, transverse, obverse (a favourite), reverse, inverse, universe, diverse, perverse etc.<\/p>\n

Please add any I have missed. Also add a favourite Latin word of your own, with lots of English “spin-offs.”<\/p>\n

There are many excellent Latin verbs to choose from. I particularly liked the word “to turn.” It has a lot to do with the inherent puns – “turn of phrase,” “spin-off” and so on. I know that some people do math problems all day long. I could spend the day inventing new words or bringing some old ones back to life!!<\/p>\n

The picture? The obverse side of a coin or medal is the one with the head on it.<\/p>\n

Have a scrutable day!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading an article on the Mental Floss site – 12 Lonely Negative Words. It’s a fascinating discussion of why we can be “disgruntled,” for example, but we can never be “gruntled.” If you read the article, please read the comments. They are a wonderful discussion of the curiosities of the English language. The un – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4456,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions\/4456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}