There’s a type of humor in which a person takes a word, like immaculate (meaning spotless, of course), and spins it around by using “maculate” to mean stained or dirty.
I was whelmed, rather than overwhelmed, for example.
But of course, most of those humorous words actually WERE used for real, back in the day. I like coming across them.
I’m reading a book called, “Kabloona,” for example, which was written in the 30’s. The author says maculate and maculated without a hint of humor or irony. I love it.
[“Underwhelm” is an exception. It was purely made up for fun, without ever being historically used. That’s because “whelm” means to overturn or crush or engulf or bury. Overwhelm meant that, but EVEN MORE. Underwhelm doesn’t make sense in that context, but I think it’s actually gaining ground as a for-real term that people use without thinking of it as funny.]
I can’t believe you posted this. Just before Thanksgiving, I was mad about something at work and told my boss I was “disgruntled” he said, “don’t be disgruntled, be gruntled,” which made us wonder whether that was a word. Well, as we looked it up, we realized that it was, and that it was often used to express a good humor after a good meal. A timely discovery. I proceeded to tell everyone that they should lean back in their chair after their turkey dinner and express to everyone that they are quite gruntled. Interestingly, my browser auto spell checker doesn’t recognize it as a word.
Gruntled is apparently a back-formation, meaning that it wasn’t really a word until people started making it backwards from disgruntled (mainly as a joke, just like underwhelm).
The earliest quotation in the OED for disgruntled is in the 1600’s, but the earliest for gruntled is 1938, P.G Wodehouse, being funny, as usual.
Apparently my spell check uses a pre-1938 version.