Are happy employees "gruntled"?

Question

We know that unhappy employees are often called "disgruntled."

Answer 1

It's fun to play with the word this way. But if you really want to use the same root to refer to the uncomplaining or happy ones, you'd have to coin a word like "ungruntled" or "undisgruntled" (or "nongruntled", etc.)

That's because the prefix "dis" does not always function as a negative. It can be used as an intensifier. That is the case with "disgruntled".

"Gruntled" already meant "angry" or "complaining" -- related to the word "grunt". "Disgruntled" meant "VERY gruntled." So, if you want to refer to an employee who is unhappy, but not quite so much as the other 'disgruntled' ones you might resurrect the old word and call him "gruntled"!

(Actually, the "-le" ending on a verb like this makes it "frequentative", that is, it refers to a repeated action. So 'gruntle', like 'grumble' suggests incessant complaining!)

Answer 2

Gruntled Meaning

Answer 3

Are You Gruntled Yet?
Some long-lost words remain in our language as pieces of other words. Take, for example, the word "ruthless." The old word "ruth", meaning roughly, "pity", has dropped out of the language entirely, but "ruthless" remains, its difference from "pitiless" somehow making it still a useful word.
"Uncouth" is another example of an orphaned piece of a word. The word "couth", meaning "combed", has long since vanished.

"Dismay" is another interesting word. The "may" part of it comes from the Anglo-Saxon "maegen", (the "g" is pronounced as a "y") the word for strength in Old England. It is the same word that is used in the expression "with might and main." Later it was extended to mean "courage". The word "dismayed" meant "deprived of courage or resolution".

A slight diversion here -- because the "g" before a high front vowel (like "i" or "e") was pronounced as a "y", we have many interesting "g/y" combinations in modern English. Did you know the word "yard" and the word "guard" were originally the same word, spelled "yeard" and meaning, roughly, "protected place"? "Yard" is the Anglo-Saxon pronunciation and "guard" the Viking pronunciation, but they gradually shifted in meaning so that the north of England, where they used the Viking pronunciation, took it more in its "protected" meaning, and the south took it more to mean a piece of land.

Our word "if" was originally "gif", and you can still sometimes see it written that way in old manuscripts, but since the "y" sound at the beginning was almost silent, it got dropped off.

And are you gruntled yet? The "dis" of disgruntled is not the same as the "dis" of "dismayed." It means "completely", and so "gruntled," just as it sounds, is an old word that means "grumbling." Today, however, "gruntled" has found its way into dictionaries as a word in its own right. If you look at the origin, you will see that it gives "gruntled" as a back-formation from "disgruntled." People assumed that "disgruntled" was a negative and invented the word "gruntled." Similar back-formations add new words to the English dictionary every year. One of the most well-known as a back-formation is "edit, " which arose because the word "editor" sounds as if it should mean "one who edits."


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Answer 4

Though I don't believe it's been defined in any dictionary, there is a day called "Gruntled Workers' Day", and a cartoon strip called "Gruntled Workers"

http://www.wellcat.com/july/gruntled_workers_day.htm
http://www.adailycartoon.com/PanelCartoons/Gruntled.html

Answer 5

This may be an example of a humorous back-formation. Well, not exactly a back-formation, more like a dropping of prefixes like "dis" and "un." I've seen an essay that used about 100 of these - very funny - wish I could find it again.

Other examples of back-formations are "orientate" from "orientation" (the correct form is "orient"); "commentate" from "commentator" (the correct form is "comment"); and one I've begun heard recently, "conversate" from "conversation" (the correct form is, of course, "converse").

Answer 6

You are a strange and unusual person. You should think about opening a theme park.

Great question! :)