Feeling Gruntled?
My daughter sometimes asks me about words she comes across in her reading that she doesn’t quite know. Yesterday, she came across “disgruntled”.
I explained that this meant “not too happy, or dissatisfied with something”, which seems reasonably close. We also had a discussion about the absence of “gruntled” as a counterpart to “disgruntled.”
It seems as though “gruntled” should mean something like “relatively pleased or satisfied with something.”
A quick search turns up a few references:
The “dis” of disgruntled is not the same as the “dis” of “dismayed.” It means “completely”, and so “gruntled,” just as it sounds, is an old word that means “grumbling.” Today, however, “gruntled” has found its way into dictionaries as a word in its own right. If you look at the origin, you will see that it gives “gruntled” as a back-formation from “disgruntled.” People assumed that “disgruntled” was a negative and invented the word “gruntled.”
This person came up with a Webster’s Dictionary definition and named their web site after “gruntled”:
Webster’s dictionary defines gruntled as:
grun•tle grun•tled grun•tling [back-formation fr. disgruntle] (1926)
verb transitive
: to put in a good humor
gruntled
adjective HUMOROUS
happy or satisfied:
- Although he wasn’t actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
Are you feeling gruntled today?
