January 25 – Opposite Day

Posted on January 25, 2015

Is this a thing? I gather from mentions on various TV shows that Opposite Day parties and celebrations have been happening for years – just not where I live, I guess!

At any rate, we are urged to do things backwards, to do different things, to live as opposite to normal as possible. If you say “yes,” you mean “no.” If you say “black,” you mean “white,” if you say “bright,” you mean “dark,” if you say “day,” you mean “night.” You get the drift!

Dressing backwards has a long and
proud tradition!

Opposite or not?

I don't think that most colors have
opposites, but we are very used to
thinking of black and white as opposites.

But I just used this picture because
everything is better with kitties!

Not all words have opposites, of course. When you look at antonyms (which is a fancy term for the word opposite in meaning to another), you find that a lot of adjectives and adverbs, and some nouns and verbs, have an antonym. But a lot of words do not. For example, what is the opposite of yellow? I would say that yellow's complementary color—the color on the opposite side of a color wheel from yellow, which is purple—is not actually the antonym or opposite of yellow. I would say that yellow has no antonym. Unless, of course, you are using the word yellow to mean cowardly, in which case it has antonyms like brave and courageous.

I would guess that most words have some meanings for which there is no antonym. For example, day and night are often thought of as opposites, but day often (maybe usually) means a 24-hour period that includes “daytime” or light AND “nighttime” or dark. And that meaning of day has no opposite.

Here are a few other examples of words that have no antonyms: panda, hour, ukulele, daffodil.

Celebrate Opposite Day!

• Play an antonym game at ABC Ya or at Learning Games for Kids. 
• Eat dinner at breakfast or dessert first and salad last.
• Dress backwards.
• Have an Opposite Day party with an upside down cake that you eat on the floor, under the table!

Also on this date:

Alasitas Fair in Bolivia

A Room of One's Own Day 

Day of Serpents in Lithuania 

Burn's Night in Scotland

Russian Students' Day

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

• January holidays 
• January birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in January

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• February holidays 
• February birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in February

July 13 – Gruntled Workers Day

Posted on July 13, 2014

Thomas and Ruth Roy of Wellcat had heard about disgruntled workers quitting their jobs, going on strike, even suing their employers. 

And they got to wondering, what would gruntled workers be?

And what would gruntled workers do with a special day all to themselves?

If “disgruntled” means dissatisfied and discontented, it stands to reason that “gruntled” would mean satisfied and contented...except, actually, there isn't such a word as “gruntled”!

Well, actually, you might find “gruntled” in a good dictionary, because in the 1930s people who noticed that disgruntled is not part of an antonym word pair, like satisfied and dissatisfied are, jokingly started to use gruntled just as the Roys did, in jest. This is called a back-formation.

(The term “back-formation” indicates that the word formation went backwards from disgruntled to gruntled, rather than the usual direction of word formation, when someone tacks on an antonym prefix like dis-.)

So, in addition to encouraging people to celebrate Gruntled Workers Day by being proud of our jobs (or school, family, hobby, or self) – I also would love to encourage you to think of unpaired words – that is, words that aren't part of an antonym pair – and to find out if the missing antonym used to be a word.

Here's another unpaired word to get you started:

• unruly means disorderly, out of control

• ruly means well behaved, in control – BUT it is archaic and nowadays is almost never seen or used

An even more interesting sort of word, in my opinion, is the word that means the same thing as what you would think would be its opposite. Here is one example:

• regardless means without regard (that is, without thinking about) the current situation

• irregardless means …. (wait for it!) without regard (that is, without thinking about) the current situation

In other words irregardless means regardless!

The truth of the matter is that irregardless is not a “proper” word. It is considered to be non-standard. It is a word that English speakers created, not in a joking way, like gruntled, but accidentally, by adding an extra (and unnecessary) antonym prefix (ir-) to a word that already has a proper antonym suffix (-less).

Also on this date:

French Fries Day 

Statehood Day in Montenegro 

Obon, or Day of the Souls, in Japan

Rubik's Cube inventor Erno Rubik's birthday

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• July holidays
• July birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in July

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• August holidays 
• August birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in August
  

April 29, 2010

Anniversary of Publication of Roget's Thesaurus (1852)

On this date in 1852, the first edition of an English-language thesaurus created by Dr. Peter Mark Roget was published. It included 15,000 words. Since that year, Roget's Thesaurus has never been out of print, and the words inside have steadily grown—with more than a quarter of a million words by now...

A thesaurus is a list of words organized by concept, with synonyms and sometimes antonyms listed together. It is not a list with which writers and students can simply swap words, because often the meanings or the feeling-tones (in other words, the definitions and the connotations) of various words are different. People using a thesaurus can browse a list looking for just the right word.


Here's an example: in one section of Roget's Thesaurus we find market, emporium, open air market, marketplace, flea market, auction room, street market, shop, store, depot, warehouse, bazaar, trading post, arcade, trading center, department store, chain store, trade fair, exchange, exhibition, boutique, supermarket, grocery store, superstore, cash and carry, convenience store, stall, booth, stand, corner shop, kiosk, newsstand, counter, vending machine, shopping center...
Each of these words has a particular meaning and tone. A J.C.Penny's isn't a boutique or kiosk, and the tiny floral shop on the corner isn't a grocery store or trading post.

Dr. Roget started his word list in 1805, two years before Daniel Webster started writing his dictionary. Dr. Roget used his list privately for almost 50 years before publishing it. He lived a long life (until age 90!) and was able to see his work through 28 printings (and, of course, there have been many, many more since then).

Rate the following words for their connotation.
Which one is more positive (or less negative) than the other?

• Slim....skinny
• Obese...sturdy
• Immature...young
• Timid...cautious
• Communicative...babbling
• Gossipy...newsy
• Fanciful...untrue
• Precise...fastidious
• Deceptive...unrealistic
• Idiotic...foolish

My Answers: I think that these words are more positive (less negative): slim, sturdy, young, cautious, communicative, newsy, fanciful, precise, unrealistic, foolish. Do you agree?

BrainPop has some activities about synonyms and antonyms.