THE FULLNESS, OR NOT, OF CERTAIN WORDS

English speakers historically have made a practice of turning nouns, and sometimes verbs, into adjectives by adding either the suffix “-less” or its opposite “-ful” (the suffix version of the word full) to their word of choice.  This has left us with some rather odd remnant words.

For instance, ruthless is commonly understood to imply savagery or a disregard for consequences. No one questions this. But what is the root word? Ruth is no longer used, except as a person’s name. I wonder how many people can even define it. The opposite version, ruthful, has not been in use since the 17^th century.

In a contrary instance, rueful’s root word rue is frequently found as a convenient three-letter word in crossword puzzles if not often in everyday speech. But rueless does not exist, may not ever have existed. Also interesting to note, rueful might be used as an antonym for ruthless.

Continuing on with R words, consider reckless with a meaning not unlike that of ruthless above. At first glance, you might think the root of reckless is “reck” (a verb) which is no longer an English word. Is it related to the word reckon? Could be. To reckon is to count up or render an accounting while reckless could not care less about making an accounting of its behavior.

But do be careful. Do not confuse the “reck” in reckless with the spelling of a separate and unrelated word, wreck. I know it is tempting, but it is not correct. By the way, to be thorough, reckful did exist but is now archaic.

A near-rhyme for reckless is feckless, meaning ineffectual or weak. There is a feckful, but it also is archaic. The work feckless is related to effect and the ancient Scots are the ones you can blame for the “feck” spelling.

Here’s a great one to ponder, gormless. It’s a rather goofy looking, goofy sounded word, right? How appropriate as it means wanting sense or stupid. This is a particularly British word with its origin vaguely from a Norse word meaning alert and heedful. And need you ask? There is no gormful, nor evidence that it ever existed. The opposite of gormless, though rarely used, is gaumy!

For those who might care, words like these are referred to as “unpaired” or called nonce words.

#EnglishLanguage #ESL