Re: Two different opposites

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Joe wrote:

> Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> >It's interesting that there can sometimes be more than
> >one "opposite" to a word.  While I was atempting to
> >discover which verb roots are necessary and which can
> >be formed by a negating prefix on the root, I noticed
> >that I need two different negating prefixes, one for
> >"un" and one for "not".
> >
> >
>
> Well, 'not'(on verbs) does not oppose, but makes things
> absent(linguistic term for this?), whereas un- makes things opposite.
>
> On the other hand, on adjectives, they are identical, making things
> absent or opposite, depending on the adjective in question.  There is,
> however, a third possibility is some things, and in some, it's not even
> included into English.
>
> For instance, we have 'welcome' 'unwelcome', and 'neither welcome nor
> unwelcome'.  I suggest a new prefix 'en-'. For instance 'enfast' means
> 'not fast', but 'unfast' means 'slow'.
Well, en- already has a meaning so I'm not sure that that's such a good
idea, and in-'s already overloaded (Latin for both un- and en- making for
the obvious fun with inflammible). An- is a simple negative in Greek
terms, so we're left with on-. Try on- on for size. (Personally, enfast to
me sound like you're making something fast, though, perhaps, that implies
that it's not yet fast.)

--
Tristan

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