Poor Richard’s Almanac

Our friend Ben and Silence Dogood acquired a free Berks County Community Development Office 2009 Calendar yesterday from our local library in nearby Kutztown, Pennsylvania. We were in hopes that it would highlight local activities that we might be unaware of, but as our friend Ben flipped through the pages, I began to see that it featured a number of rather curious “holidays” instead. Intrigued, I took a tally to see just what the calendar compilers were up to.

Now, National Hotdog Day, Donald Duck Day, Fasnacht Day (known elsewhere as Mardi Gras), National Grammar Day, PA Fish for Free Day, National Checkers Day, National Garage Sale Day, and even Daniel Boone’s Birthday ((November 1st, 1734) may not strike you all as particularly quirky, though (fond as I am of Daniel Boone) they were almost too much for our friend Ben. But how about National Single Tasking Day, National Blah Blah Blah Day, National Honesty Day, Juneteenth, National 21st Amendment Day (our friend Ben had to look up the 21st Amendment to learn that it was the one that repealed Prohibition), National Bad Poetry Day, Dogs in Politics Day, Sweetest Day (October 17th, for reasons unknown to our friend Ben; it seems to me that Hallowe’en might have been more appropriate), National Buy Nothing Day, National Cat Herders Day, Festivus for the Rest of Us, and—our friend Ben’s favorite—National No Socks Day (celebrated on May 8th)? Not to mention National Win with Civility Month (August) and—let’s all celebrate!!!—National Chicken Month (September). (Oops, Silence points out that this may refer to eating chicken rather than raising chickens, but let’s hope it’s a celebration of the joys of backyard chickens instead.)

The back of the calendar is taken up by a list of “Frequently Called County Numbers,” beginning with the number for Adult Probation (our friend Ben trusts that this was just an alphabetical coincidence). The list also features a phone number for a title one doesn’t encounter every day, Prothonotary. Not being in the legal profession, our friend Ben’s acquaintance with this word had formerly been limited to the prothonotary warbler, whose name, it turns out, does not refer to the bird’s legalistic tendencies but rather to the supposed resemblance of its plumage to the prothonotary’s traditional yellow hood. (A quick check of my faithful Webster’s New World College Dictionary reveals that a prothonotary is “a chief clerk in some law courts” or, in the Catholic Church, “any of the seven members of the College of Prothonotaries Apostolic, who record important pontifical events,” in case you’re wondering.) 

All of this was enough to cause the bemused Ben to wonder if someone had been celebrating National 21st Amendment Day a bit too enthusiastically when the calendar was being composed. But it was one day on the calendar, July 13th, National Gruntled Workers Day, that inspired me to write this post and share the hilarity with all of you.

Gruntled. How many times have you used or heard this word? Disgruntled, yes. Gruntled, no. It made our friend Ben think about how many other words were used only the negative rather than both the negative and positive forms. In Britain, I gather that people talk about clement weather. In the U.S., we might say the weather was inclement, but Clement is reserved for a proper name, one you’re grateful your parents didn’t bestow on you. (We have nice weather instead.) We refer to untoward occurrences but not to toward events.

Words that begin with “dis-” often fall in this category. We may call an act or comment disingenuous if we believe its perpetrator is playing the innocent to deceive us, but would never say that a knowing act or comment was ingenuous. We are distressed but not tressed; disgusted but not gusted; dismayed but not mayed; disturbed but not turbed. Distraught but not traught, disputatious but not putatious, distracted but not tracted, discomfited but not comfited, discombobulated but not combobulated, and on and on. (Though this is not a rule of thumb by any means. We discredit and credit, disclaim and claim, disconnect and connect, feel discomfort and comfort, are discontented and contented, etc.)

English is a difficult and curious language, to say the least. (Most bizarre to our friend Ben are cases where a word and its apparent opposite actually mean the same thing, as in flammable and inflammable. But I digress.) Our friend Ben is certain that many, many instances of a negative term being in common use without a positive equivalent have slipped my mind here. So please, if any spring to mind, share them with us!