The mysterious case of the "lost positive"

I think Susie is wrong about calling nocent and maculate "lost negatives." While they do denote ideas with negative connotations, grammatically they are still positives - they indicate the presence of something, rather than its absence

As someone who sells and actually reads old, rare and antiquarian books, I can proudly say that these ‘lost positives’ are not lost with me. Long live antiquarian booksellers.

May family occasionally uses "gruntled" just to sound silly-- I had no idea that was P.G. Wodehouse's doing! That makes it even better.

"Indefatigable" is like a double negative squeezed into a single word. I'd love to see a video going over more examples of this!

Back in grade school, I remember that we had innocent and nocent as spelling words for the week. Everyone was confused by nocent, including the parents and teachers.

“Well kempt” is a pretty common phrase. I’ve not heard kempt much, but I have heard it. Also I’ve personally used the word “couth” before. I really like it. I heard it get used a few times (by the same person) and picked it up. I haven’t used it much, but still.

I think the beauty of language is that regardless of whether a word is "real" you could say nearly all of these lost positives or false positives and most people can put together what you mean. That sort of intellectual elasticity must've been crucial before we allowed a bunch of self important nerds decided to police and taxonomize language.

The Wodehouse use of gruntled reminds me of the excellent Tim Curry line in Clue, after establishing he was the butler, a guest asked him what he did. "I butle, sir!"

A slight correction on the Flammable/Inflammable issue. There is a subtle distinction between the two in strictly literal sense. "Inflammable" is meant to mean "Able to be set on fire", while "Flammable" is meant to mean "Capable of bursting into flame" - the former implies that you would need some exterior sort of ignition to set the substance ablaze, while the latter will ignite of its own volition, given the right conditions (which may be narrow or broad, depending). Naturally, since the two meanings are very similar, and easy to confuse with one another, they have melded into a single common meaning over the years from common use.

A friend of mine is a professor of Composition and Rhetoric, we often had discussions about words like these. One of my favorites was "refurbished", and we discussed how we had never seen anything "furbished". Then I saw a truck at a local resort listing "furbishing" as a service.

What I think is cool about a lot of these is that the "positves" aren't really lost - they're just morphed a bit. Like unkempt/combed, or inept/aptitude. The traces of the lost positives still exist, but they don’t form a perfect pair anymore.

My young daughter made the observation to my wife that the reason the toaster was not working was because it was plugged out. "Plugged in" and "unplugged" are what I would call an unbalanced pair. Cousins of "lost positives" I suppose. Apparently we needed to parentally correct our daughter but instead adopted her phraseology, lest we tell her to unplug the toaster only to have her take scissors to the end of the cord. Speaking of plugging, I always found it amusing that gangsters could plug a man with a revolver by filling him full of holes.

What's great about this is that you can just use these lost-positive words if you want. People can tell you "you're wrong, that's not a word" but if you start using it... it becomes a word that is in use. And the meaning is often quite obvious as just being the opposite of the more common negative.

I was told once of an area in an airport, post Security, that was called (by an official sign) of the "Recombobulation Area." Clearly the place to go after being discombobulated by the TSA.

One of my favourite books (well the whole series really) growing up was Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons", where one of the characters, Nancy, has changed her name from Ruth because they're playing at pirates and their uncle told them that pirates are ruthless.

As a German with a CPE, I am truly delighted by your channel that I have discovered recently. Keep up your enlightening and also humourous work! It does help in general to have a multilingual background ;-) which English-speaking people often lack, regrettably. From my German perspective, I am often surprised that Middle English bears far more resemblance to German than Modern English - a fact perfectly known to you, of course.

I've seen 'nocent' used in medical literature to mean toxic or harmful. In biology, especially taxonomic descriptions, 'maculate' means spotted.

Kempt, usually qualified with well-kempt has been a familiar word for as long as I can remember. It can be applied to people but quite often to pet animals.

Many years ago, I was visiting a friend and after general pleasantries were exchanged he said, "What's wrong? You seem disgruntled." But no, I was not and assured him that my gruntles were perfectly fine, thank you.

A verse from a widely-sung hymn has the word 'whelming' in it: His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.