Don’t gruntle if you are gruntled
I was talking about Halloween costumes last month with a reporter friend who had recently left a job where she wasn’t very happy for one that has been a lot better. She asked for suggestions, so I said: “How about a disgruntled journalist?”
“But that’s my everyday costume!” she said.
“But aren’t you gruntled now?” I said.
I then looked up gruntled, suspecting that disgruntled was one of those words that existed independent of the root word. I was partially right, as the OED explains that gruntled is a “back-formation from disgruntled” that means “pleased, satisfied, contented.” It’s not a particularly recent back-formation though, as the OED’s first quotation with gruntled is from 1938.
But digging into the OED, I found that disgruntle goes back much farther, with a quotation from 1682. It’s a combination of dis- and gruntle.
But wait, isn’t gruntled a back-formation? Not when you go back this far, where the meaning of gruntle is “to grumble, murmur, complain”; the first quotation in that sense goes to 1589. And the dis- prefix here isn’t used in the most common sense of “In twain, in different directions, apart, asunder, hence abroad, away” as in disconnect or dismiss. The OED’s fifth definition for dis- is how it is used in disgruntle:
- “With verbs having already a sense of division, solution, separation, or undoing, the addition of dis- was naturally intensive, ‘away, out and out, utterly, exceedingly’, as in disperere to perish utterly, dispudire to be utterly ashamed, distædere to be utterly wearied or disgusted; hence it became an intensive in some other verbs, as dilaudere to praise exceedingly, discupere to desire vehemently, dissuaviri to kiss ardently. In the same way, English has several verbs in which dis- adds intensity to words having already a sense of undoing, as in disalter, disaltern, disannul.”
And disgruntle, which the OED defines as: “To put into sulky dissatisfaction or ill-humour; to chagrin, disgust.”
So there is the modern gruntled, which means content, and the old gruntle, which means to grumble. English follows weird paths.
The original gruntle comes from the word grunt, unsurprisingly. Grunt’s OED etymology: from the “Old English grunnettan (= Old High German, modern German grunzen), frequently of grunian (compare to Middle High German grunnen), meaning to grunt, an echoic formation parallel with Latin grunnire.
Posted on November 11, 2009 12:00 pm, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
>>frequently of grunian
Is this a Cupertino? Surely you meant “frequentative”.
Faldone:
The OED uses a lot of abbreviations in their etymologies, and I check their abbreviations lists to get the full words when I use them here. Here is the original etymology, with abbreviations:
[OE. grunnettan (= OHG., mod.G. grunzen), freq. of grunian (cf. MHG. grunnen) to grunt, an echoic formation parallel with L. grunnire.]
The entry for freq. in the OED’s abbreviation list says it stands for “frequently.”
Gruntle is certainly a frequentative of grunt. And it could be that the OED used freq. to mean frequentative here but did not include that in its abbreviations list, but I don’t know enough (read: anything) about Old English to say for sure.
Can anyone out there elaborate or provide some clarity on this issue?
I think I’ll write something up about frequentatives next month when I am back to full posting.
Right, back to my project. Thanks for bringing this up!
Or either the OED got Cupertinoed. Was this the on-line OED? I’ll look it up in my brick and mortar OED when I get home tonight.
Faldone:
Yeah, that could be it too. It was the online OED. I’m jealous that you have the real thing! But thanks for offering to look it up. I’m interested to find out what’s going on here.
Well, brick and mortar OED also has ‘freq. ………..frequently’ so I don’t think we can blame the Cupertino effect. However, the B&M OED has in its etym for gruntle, ‘f GRUNT, v. with dim. or frequentative ending -LE.’ So maybe the on-line version got frequentative abbreviated by someone who didn’t bother to check the abbreviation page.
Re: “brick and mortar OED”. I’ve always thought the phrase “brick and mortar” referred to the store where you purchase books, not the book itself. The book itself is the “dead tree version”. Whatever slang you use to refer to it, though, I’m jealous, too!
I could have said “dead and frozen OED” It doesn’t come with regular updates and no matter how much I play with the keyboard and mouse the print stays that itty-bitty, hope-I-don’t-lose-the-magnifying-glass size. At least I don’t have to pay an annual fee to keep using it.
I liked “Brick and Mortar” OED. “Dead tree” and “Dead and frozen” work well too.
I’m dreading the day I live in a city where the library doesn’t subscribe to the OED. I can’t afford the books or the subscription.