Come talk about fun and quirky words in the English Language. Posting is open to all members.
A word so powerful it destroys prefixes

My word for the day isn't terribly obscure, but it is quite curious. We all understand the prefix un to make a word its opposite. Married vs. unmarried. Appealing vs. unappealing. But the word ravel is so powerful that it destroys even this mighty prefix. Yes, folks, the words ravel and unravel mean virtually the same thing!




Haha, this is a good post!
So let's make things more confusing. I could be wrong, but doesn't ravel have two opposing meanings? I always thought ravel could mean to tangle or disentangle. WHY, ENGLISH, WHY
Also, now I'm suddenly thinking of "flammable" and "inflammable," which also mean the same thing. "Indefensible" is to have no defense, so why isn't "inflammable" to have no flame?
I think so too! "disgruntled" does too, iirc. That's what using words ironically gets you...
Not me. I'm just gruntled.
This is amazing. The best part is my brain understands both words without ever having thought about it. All that cognitive dissonance.
I think it's also interesting how much more common unravel is than ravel. I wonder what the history is that caused that to happen.
It's probably because "ravel" also means to entangle or confuse. Which probably gets ravelling when someone tells you how they ravelled something, after first ravelling it.
Your comment kind of ravel'd me.
I had to read it over a few times to make sure it made sense :)
Whoa, I find this so cool!