gruntled and whelmed

[bailey66]

Can you be underwhelmed or regruntled? And why do people try to "unthaw" a steak?
If raveling is to take apart isn't unravel really knitting? Sometimes English makes no sense.

Mark hoping-for-some-discussion Bailey

[bailey36]

ok to clarify, I'm Bailey 36 on my pc which I rarely use and Bailey66 on my Kindle. I thought I had to register when I couldn't login on my Kindle. sorry for the confusion.


m. i'm-so-corfusded Bailey

[Perry Lassiter]

I have frequently said I am underwhelmed at all sorts of things. I attribute its use to my reputedly dry sense of humor.

[bailey66]

I have frequently said I am underwhelmed at all sorts of things. I attribute its use to my reputedly dry sense of humor.

You and me both, Perry. Dry as dust. Most folks don't get it all.

[Perry Lassiter]

What troubles me, Bailey, is I can find no wet humor.

Also in line with this thread it today's other post on frain/refrain.

[bailey66]

Perry I fear wet humor is what my father favored what we called bathroom humor. Anything genital, anal, or elimination-based was automatically funny. He got a lot of mileage out of his mother's friend Gladys.

This leaves me somewhat gruntled and mayed (whatever that means)

[Stargzer]

Hmm. I've heard "underwhelmed" and "underwhelming" before, in the sense of being not to impressed with a presentation, but I didn't know their coinage was so recent in the scheme of the language.

My late friend Larry Bowen often talked about using the term "fully gruntled" as the opposite of "disgruntled." It turns out that "grungle" has been around longer than I'd thought.

"Unthaw" surprises me with its age.

overwhelm (v.)
early 14c., "to turn upside down, to overthrow," from over- + Middle English whelmen "to turn upside down" (see whelm). Meaning "to submerge completely" is mid-15c. Perhaps the connecting notion is a boat, etc., washed over, and overset, by a big wave. Figurative sense of "to bring to ruin" is attested from 1520s. Related: Overwhelmed; overwhelming; overwhelmingly.

underwhelm (v.)
1953 (implied in underwhelming), a facetious play on overwhelm, with under. Related: Underwhelmed; underwhelmingly.

gruntle (v.)
1938, in gruntled "pleased, satisfied," a back-formation from disgruntled. The original verb (early 15c.) meant "to utter a little or low grunt," hence "to murmur, complain" (1580s), but was rare or dialectal by 19c.

disgruntled (adj.)
past participle adjective from disgruntle.

disgruntle (v.)
1680s, from dis- "entirely, very" + obsolete gruntle "to grumble" (Middle English gruntelen, early 15c.), frequentative of grunt (v.).

grunt (v.)
Old English grunnettan "to grunt," frequentative of grunian "to grunt," probably imitative (compare Danish grynte, Old High German grunnizon, German grunzen "to grunt," French grogner, Latin grunnire "to grunt"). Related: Grunted; grunting. Grunter "a pig" is from 1640s.

grunt (n.)
1550s, from grunt (v.); as a type of fish, from 1713, so called from the noise they make when hauled from the water; meaning "infantry soldier" emerged in U.S. military slang during Vietnam War (first recorded in print 1969); used since 1900 of various low-level workers. Grunt work first recorded 1977.

unthaw (v.)
1590s, "to thaw," from un- (2) "opposite of" + thaw (v.). Related: Unthawed; unthawing. Unthawed also sometimes is used with a sense "frozen" (1610s.).

[bnjtokyo]

The N-gram viewer reports a brief period of popularity for "underwhelm" around 1910. Two examples: "The beer-soused British workman is a sort of social sediment. He is an underwhelm, a blood relative of England's vast pauper class. " (Proceeding of the Conference on International Relations Held at Cornell University, June 1915)
Among the tortured tenantry of Hell,
Of which thou art an underwhelm?
Go.
Then for response,
The frightful specter wound a hideous laughter out,
And answered thus inflamingly :
Dost thou not know, the humble plant
(The Science of Poetry and the Philosophy of Language, Hudson Maxim, 1910)
"whelm," according to the 1913 Webster's Unabridged, means "To cover with water or other fluid" and cites Shakespeare: "She is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!" (Merry Wives of Windsor)

"Overwhelm" and "whelm" seem to be synonyms, so would "underwhelm" mean "to partially cover" or "to remove water so as to uncover that which was previously whelmed"?

As a noun, "underwhelm" would seem to refer to that object which is covered with fluid, as in the first example above ("a sort of social sediment") since a "sediment" is substance found under a liquid at the bottom of a container.