2380: Kempt: a Word Created from Itself Jun 24, 2021

The word 'kempt' meaning 'neat' it's own word, and while that sounds like a truism, it is special insofar as it was developed twice, in a sense. The more popular 'unkempt' is far more popular, so much so that even though it is just a derivative of the (by definition) older 'kempt', the affirmative form fell out of favor. This is not so rare exactly, with other words that only have a negative form through historical disuse such as 'nonsensical', but this was eventually it was brought back through a process known as 'backformation', when a word is created by the removal of an affix, such as 'butle' from 'butler'.

626: Backformation Aug 25, 2016

Plenty of words have no logical antonym: a topic that has been covered several times on this blog. When a word does not follow a pattern, usually reassuring affixation, it is possible to create words. The '-er' suffix, for example, can be used to indicate agency, among other things, but the word 'buttle' was made through backformation from 'butler'. Additionally, the prefix, 'dis-' usually has a positive form, but in the case of 'disgruntle', 'gruntle' was only created humorously in the 1920's.