English is a language of opposites - we have so many words that mean the opposite to what people think they do, such as conversely, oversight or inflammable, and lots of words that have no opposite, although we may use them in their negative form but not in their positive or neutral form, for example dishevelled, overwhelmed/underwhelmed, reckless, ruthless, or innocent. We call them unpaired words. Why do we not use opposites for them, and where do these words come from?
In order to give us an idea of why these words exist in one form but not another, we should start with finding their origins, because therein (or herein, but never hereout or thereout!) lies the answer. Way back when English was still being standardised and formed, lots of variations could be found throughout the country in all types of words, and sometimes the original meaning didn't really require there to be an opposite. It will all become clearer when I explain...
Dishevelled:
This word has one of the most underrated journeys of all - it has worked so hard to keep itself relevant in the 21st century, and its meaning becomes clear once we note that its root part - shevel - comes directly from the French for hair, namely cheveux (singular: cheveu). In French, the verb décheveler means to ruffle someone's hair, or render it untidy. So in English, by using the dis- prefix, it has kept its origins intact from the original French descheveler. The opposite in French would be coiffer, or in English the very elegant get your hair done.
The fact that we might say someone has a dishevelled appearance, but we would never say "wow, you look very shevelled today" is obvious when we are presented with the original meaning.
Overwhelm/Underwhelm:
The origins of these two words are in fact about 600 years apart. Overwhelm started life back in the 14th century from its root whelm, meaning to cover over, or to blanket something. If a traveller was overwhelmed, it meant he or she was knocked over and smothered by something much larger and stronger, like a cow or a band of thieves, rendering the person incapable of moving, and thus we get the figurative meaning we have today of being swamped and unable to cope with something.
On the other hand, underwhelm, especially the adjective underwhelmed, sprang up in the mid-1950s as a sarcastic way to describe something that did not really amaze you at all. In the less facetious sense, the opposite would be unimpressed.
But the root word whelm never really stuck around. However, helm or helmet, a type of heavy-duty protective hat worn in the army or whilst motorcycling, most probably came from the same root, in that it is there to cover your head.
Reckless:
Anyone who speaks English to a good standard will know this word, but why can we say someone was charged with reckless driving, but not praised for his reckful driving?
Well, bear with me here...
The German root word for "behind" or "back" is -rück. Rücksicht is the German word both for self-regard or consideration for others, so when someone doesn't have any consideration for someone or take heed of a dangerous situation, he/she is rücksichtslos.
We also need to consider the Dutch roekeloos, meaning the same, and here is where we have another insight into this word: to reckon, as in to consider, is also connected, in that if you do something without reckoning on the consequences, it can be seen as reckless, thus bringing us full circle.
Finally, there is the German word ruchlos, meaning nefarious or wicked, which is related to our word in question, but most likely at a much further distance.
Ruthless:
We say someone is ruthless in business, but we can't say someone was ruthful or acted with a degree of ruth. We could, but we can't any more.
Again, this requires a little roundabout thinking, but it makes sense in the end:
The noun of the adjective true is truth, and the noun of the verb rue was ruth, before it died away. So if you rue something, you regret it, right? So ruth died away, but neither rue nor regret did. However, the reason why the verb to rue still exists, is because it means something slightly different to regret.
If you regret something, you feel sorrowful or remorseful for a past action or situation with an undesirable outcome, which you played a part in causing, but not exclusively. If you rue something, you feel sorry for a situation or event that you wish had not happened.
So ruthless behaviour is acting without regret or remorse, and has these days more of an element of cruelty or mercilessness about it, but can also mean clinical performance in sport, showing that you don't get nervous in critical points of a match.
In the German word bereuen, meaning the same, the -reu- part has the same root, as does the Dutch rouwen, also meaning to regret or to rue.
Of course, the word rueful exists to this day, whereas trueful does not and never has, but ruth and truth share the same pattern.
Innocent:
Again, another word without an opposite. One is not nocent of a crime, one is guilty. But why does it have such a strong connection with purity and absence of immorality, and not so much with ignorance or unawareness?
Because it actually comes from the Latinate/Greek root for death.
The root -nek- in Greek gives us words like necropolis, and this in turn went in to Latin to give words like nocere, meaning to harm. So noxious gases kill us, obnoxious people have a harmful personality, and even nectar - with its original meaning of a substance overcoming death - was drunk by the gods to give them immortality.
And this is why innocent has no opposite as such, because in its original setting, it means not having committed any harmful act. Take the biblical Holy Innocents, the children killed by Herod after Jesus's birth - these are children who were too young to have sinned or committed any crimes.
So now you know:
In any language, never presume the opposite exists just with a prefix removed; always seek to understand where words come from before complaining of their illogical nature, and when translating, always find a way to accommodate variations in the target language - what may be considered negative in English may be positive in another language!
