Grammar girl here, today guest writer Bonnie Tringa is going to tell us why we are rarely

gruntled, shoveled, or in whack, but why we are often disgruntled, disheveled, and out

of whack.

Thanks to interesting questions from a listener named Glenn, we'll be talking about words

or phrases that have only a negative connotation.

There's no opposite word with a positive connotation, with one exception.

These negative words might seem a bit wacky, but we'll look back at the origins of English

to discover why.

Let's start with disheveled.

In this case, the dis prefix adds a negative element.

Other negative prefixes are non, un, and in, which sometimes changes to ill, am, and

ear before certain letters.

You can also sometimes make something negative by putting anti in front of it.

You simply add the prefix to the stem word to create a new word that has a negative connotation.

You can add these prefixes to the beginning of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs to

make them negative.

So you could take the stem word honest and add the prefix dis to get dishonest.

Likewise take the stem word happiness and add the prefix un to come up with un-happiness.

You get the idea.

Many words starting with dis, such as disability, disapprove, and disagreeing, have corresponding

positive words, ability, approve, and agreeing, for example.

However, disheveled doesn't have a corresponding positive word.

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