“NEGATIVE WORDS ARE SO MUCH EASIER”
A friend asked me a wonderfully thought-provoking question this morning: “Why do we have ‘invincible,’ but we don’t have ‘vincible’?”
Actually, there is such a word as “vincible,” but it is rarely used. (In fact, my spell checker flagged “vincible” as misspelled.)
My immediate response to my friend’s question was, “I don’t know, but offhandedly I would say that we are better at negating words than we are at using positive words.”
I don’t know if that is true, and I will need to do some more research, but I can think of several words that occur in a negative sense, while the same root is not used in a positive sense. For example, why do we speak of someone as “ruthless,” but we don’t generally describe anyone as “ruthfull.”
There is “distress,” but we don’t usually speak of “eustress.” This is so, despite the fact that the same psychologist (Hans Selye) coined both words. Why did one word catch on, but the other one didn’t?
Well, I’m not too confident about my response to my friend’s question, but I do think it was a wonderful question. (In fact, I commented to him that a good question is better than a really excellent answer.)
And here is one more thought: This gravitational pull toward negative words may say something rather uncomfortable—and negative—about us humans. (Of course, we do have the words “comfortable” and “positive,” don’t we?)
In any case, my friend’s question suggests some other, even more interesting questions. Do we really have more negative words than positive ones? If so, why is that?
Of course, these questions are not simply linguistic. They are philosophical, psychological, even perhaps spiritual questions.
I think I’ll live with these questions a while. Do you have any thoughts about the matter? Let me know!
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