Empretzeling Oneself
I just received a comment on self-empretzelment from Dr. Margie Sved:
“I would have thought self-empretzeltment meant something a contortionist would do!!”
In fact, her interpretation works for me. The current meaning should have come from the one she mentions as a metaphorical (figurative) usage and semantically it does.
It is not uncommon for a derived word to appear historically before its semantic predecessor, so it would be possible for a word like uninsightfulness, say, to be used before anyone uses uninsightful. The longer word would come directly from its stem, insightful, prior to uninsightful arising from the same stem.
Happens all the time.
