English Language Oddity - Drop the R from FRIEND and you get the OPPOSITE?

[AviatorTom]

There are many oddities of the English language...

One of my favorites is... Why are the words SMALL and LITTLE larger than the words BIG or HUGE?

More recently, I found this oddity... take the "R" out of FRIEND and you get FIEND, the opposite of friend.

What is your favorite language oddity? Please share it.

[msc545]

Here are some I found:

Able → Unable: Adding "un" changes the meaning to the opposite.
Likely → Unlikely: Adding "un" makes the word mean the opposite.
Happy → Unhappy: Adding "un" changes the meaning to its opposite.
Appear → Disappear: Adding "dis" transforms the meaning to the opposite.
Connect → Disconnect: Adding "dis" makes the word mean the opposite.
Honest → Dishonest: Adding "dis" changes the meaning to the opposite.
Belief → Disbelief: Adding "dis" turns the word into its opposite.
Agree → Disagree: Adding "dis" changes the meaning to its opposite.
Qualified → Unqualified: Adding "un" changes the meaning to the opposite.
Useless → Useful: Subtracting "less" changes the meaning to the opposite.
Hopeless → Hopeful: Subtracting "less" and adding "ful" makes the word mean the opposite.
Careless → Careful: Subtracting "less" and adding "ful" transforms the meaning to the opposite.
Doubtful → Doubtless: Subtracting "ful" and adding "less" changes the meaning to its opposite.

[BlissfullyCurSed]

Woooahh... an American learning suffixes and prefixes! That's not an oddity this feature exists in almost every other Indo-Eurpoean language.

[SotiCoto]

You're cherry-picking.
The word ENORMOUS is bigger than SMALL OR LITTLE... to say nothing of TINY.
And FIEND isn't the opposite of FRIEND. They're not even mutually exclusive. One just has positive connotations while the other has negative.

Anyhow, I don't tend to be easily impressed by quirks of language. It is a tool and is meant to be considered pragmatically. I have enough of my time wasted trying to remedy the abhorrent abuses of language by randoms to even consider being sentimental about any part of it.

[strateguy632]

but his example is still TRUE n odd.

[AviatorTom]

... and INFINITESIMAL is still smaller than ENORMOUS or GIGANTIC

[SotiCoto]

If this site had better formatting options, I'd just write HUGE in a bigger font size to highlight the absurdity of this line of thought.

Or... y'know... I could just write: HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGEEEEE

[AviatorTom]

@SotiCoto Sounds like a South American soccer goal... GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLL

[purplepoppy]

I'm probably going to get corrected on this, but isn't English unusual in that you put the adjective before the noun. Eg blue ball rather than ball blue like most languages. It's also unusual for a European language not to be gendered but you should be grateful for that.

[CrazyGirl2]

My favorite oddity are palindromes! Like Madam, noon, civic, racecar, level, and mom. There is also a palindromic sentence: Able was I 'ere I saw Elba.
I just LOVE palindromes.

Laura 🤗 🥰

[CrazyGirl2]

* Oddities * Sorry! It's late, I'm tired, mistakes were made, but I think we all learned a valuable lesson here on typing after edibles!

[RebelinSteel]

The use of certain words

Wind

Wound

Bound

Clip

Buckle

Tear

the above all have different meanings and are pronounced differently.

Then you have Bomb, Comb, Tomb, all pronounced differently.

Then there is the Great Vowel shift.

[AviatorTom]

@rebelinsteel Good list. I get all of these except for Bound, Clip and Buckle. I know only one way to pronounce those. Can you please explain. Thanks.

[RebelinSteel]

My bad, should have moved them.
They simply have different meanings but same pronunciation.
Buckle under pressure - fall apart
Buckle your shoes - hold together

Clip your nails - remove
Clip on your tie - attach

Bound - tie up - Unable to move
Bound - towards something - moving forward.

[RebelinSteel]

And of course
The fire alarm is going to go off
The bell is going to go off soon

When actually they are going to go On

[purplepoppy]

The word in English with the greatest number of meanings is "set". A badgers home, the jelly has set, Sarah set the table, a story set in London, to set a clock, he set his dog on the rabbit, the sun set, to set on fire etc

[RebelinSteel]

@purplepoppy yeah it has a crazy number of uses
Including a collection of distinct, well-defined objects forming a group is a set.

[RebelinSteel]

Whole not an oddity I do like the deliberate (authors etc) and accidental usage of words that are turned Malapropisms.

I’m not sure if any other language deliberately uses them in writing or even by accident.

Shakespeare was quite the master of language, so it’s no surprise that his works contain numerous malapropism examples. In another instance, Henry IV, Part II‘s Mistress Quickly says that the character Falstaff was “indited to dinner” rather than “invited.”

You can find another malapropism in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And, perhaps surprisingly, it’s not Huck who makes the mistake—it’s Aunt Sally, who says, “I was most putrified with astonishment.” Would that be “petrified”?

President George W. Bush was called out for several malapropisms, perhaps the funniest being 2000’s “We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.” Close, but we’re pretty sure he meant “hostage,” not “hostile”!

https://www.rd.com/article/malapropism-examples/

www.masterclass.com/.../malapropism-definition

[WindAtMyBack]

It's pretty screwed up.

Read - Read

Live - Live
(backwards is evil)

How many ways can you pronounce *ough?

Good- food

Door, more, whore, boar

All ways - Always

Words ending in *ant vs *ent drive me nuts.

Same with words ending in
*el
*le
*al
*il
etc

I started teaching ESL very part time a few years ago. It made me realize just how totally screwed up English is. Although I've met a lot of people who say other languages are worse.

[Ez-Bri-Z_v2]

Oh things like why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway. Those always blow my mind.

[Ez-Bri-Z_v2]

Oh and Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia which is the fear of long words.

[TommyMountainFigure]

My favourite anomaly Tom is 'dyslexia' to describe people with learning difficulties, specifically to do with spelling!

Would it have killed them to pick a word they could find easier to spell?

[ArrowheadSW]

I would imagine that has been a "Jeopardy!" category in the past. "Drop a letter to get the opposite meaning."

[NathanDavis]

AA is a word by itself... Aa

but most people will get the other meanings for it, acronyms...

[strateguy632]

nope, not in the dictionary doesn't count as a word , if you mean lava, need apostrophe a'a, but in scrabble maybe.

[Nikki1989]

Santa is awfully close to Satan. That says a lot about Christmas and religious celebrations.

[SaoirseS]

Surly grammarians who insist all words ending in -ly are adverbs.

[RetroReviews]

Krang said " Shredder you are an insane power mad fiend!"

[nawtee_me]

The English language… The English langue

[OtterMan68]

why is abbreviation such a long word?
Why do you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway?
The fact home and come don't rhyme but home and comb do is dumb
Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing

[purplepoppy]

Flammable means it can burn but needs a source of ignition eg paper while inflammable means it can can self ignite eg electric cars.

[Astarlessnightsky]

German oddities:

umfahren is the opposite of umfahren

[lightbulb27]

drive on the parkway and park in the driveway.

[DrPepper12]

"The opinion he had had had had no effect" is grammatically correct

[LiamJHayden]

ough Cough, through, dough, etc.

[strateguy632]

those are crazy n hard to learn seems all same.
a linguist suggested to start a trend for 3rd, "throo" usage: i throo a ball throo a hoop.
vowel sound hoop.

[Cubus]

a. k. a. - you're British