ArsGeek

Gruntled.  Now there’s a word that you just don’t see anymore – in fact, we may never have seen it.  What?  You don’t know what Gruntled means?  Let me use it in a sentence.

Larry was so gruntled today, he didn’t even haul off on anyone with an assault rifle.

Gruntled. The opposite of disgruntled.  Sometime back in our murky past we added the prefix ‘dis’ to the fine word gruntled and then gruntled ambled off to the word graveyard never to be seen again.

This is a word I’d like to bring back into everyday use.  Say it with me.  Gruntled.  Doesn’t that have a nice sound?  It’s got a ring to it, like discombobulated but with a refined touch.  In fact, writing this little article makes me very gruntled! Which is a good thing, because I’m on a dark train with no AC surrounded by sweaty, swearing commuters.  I should be disgruntled but contemplating the gruntling effects of composing a quick thought piece on the wrecked past of our language has made me happy to the last.

I was so curious about disgruntled that I cast about online for it’s history.  The wonderful and highly useful Online Etymology Dictionary (I was thrown for a bit searching for Entomology and coming up all bugs) tells us that disgruntle was first used in or around 1682.  It comes to us from ‘dis’ meaning ‘entirely’ and gruntle; ‘to grumble’ arriving to us from ‘grunt’.

By the by, the Online Etymology Dictionary works out in acronym form to be the OED – very similar to another in-print version of an dictionary featuring Etymology that I can’t mention for fear of being sued by lawyers with expensive suits and British accents.

So perhaps my self-created history of Gruntle is a bit off – gruntle – to grunt.  Hmm.  Can you be gruntled?  Grunty?  I prefer happy to grunty, unless of course I’m grunting happily, perhaps parked in front of a large bowl of nachos or a powerful computer.

I say move forward and to heck (euphemistic alteration of hell, first recorded 1865) with etymology!  Let’s gruntle for world peace, a favorable salary and the ability to change our language as we see fit!

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