Blather

So I was thinking about the word female. There's gotta be something wrong with thinking about the word rather than the gender, but there you go. Female is basically the word male with fe tacked in front. Fe is a prefix, meaning it's a word fragment that goes in front of the word, like pre is. Prefix has a prefix.

Anyway, I was musing over the fact that fe+male meant the opposite of just male, and I wondered if there were other words like that. Can you think of any?

How about feline? A line is the shortest distance between two points. Ever see a feline go between two points? So I had two words like that. Were there any more? I could only come up with one more word whose meaning flipped by making it a fe-word. It's not as clean, but it works. Can you think of one?

How about feeble? A bull is the symbol of strength, but feeble is the opposite of that. I think this example is rather feeble, but I couldn't think of any others. Can you?

Speaking of felines, I decided today what we should name our next cat, should we ever get one. I would name it Wumpus. As in Kitty-Wumpus or Hunt the Wumpus. I'd better stop before Connie makes me sleep on the couch.


Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Chatter