[livejournal.com profile] drood's entry here which deals with "reckless" and its rarely-seen positive form "reck" reminded me of a list E and I made in high school of words which exist only in the negative. From words such as "disheveled," "anemic," and "inertia" we made positive back formations. Thus, we often said things like "You look particularly heveled today," "Jerry is so emic he could probably set off a metal detector if he walked through it naked," and, upon smacking someone for stupidity "Oops! Ertia! The tendency of a body at rest to go in to motion!"

Yes, we were dorks.
.

Profile

kivrin: Peter Wimsey with a Sherlock Holmes quotation (Default)
kivrin

Most Popular Tags

Powered by Dreamwidth Studios

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags