English has lost all manner of positive words

“A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” From our current perspective, even a little bit of happiness might be nice – an inkling that there are brighter days ahead – but with those words George Bernard Shaw was simply voicing the familiar truth that life will always, to use an 16th-century adjective, be “merry-go-sorry”, shifting between light and dark.

A riffle through a historical English dictionary – the articulation of human thoughts and experiences across centuries – suggests that the “sorry” bits have always had the edge, linguistically at least, and that happiness is a much rarer commodity.

Take the letter A. The emotions you will find there include “apanthropy”: the desire to be away from other people; “abhorrence”, deep disgust; the “abdabs”, anxiety, usually of the “screaming” variety; “antsy”, feeling agitated; “all-overish” (generally a bit “meh”); and “acedia”, an apathy of body and spirit.

Even our most recent coinages are a let-down – quite literally in the case of “anticipointment”, which conveys the inevitable disappointment that follows something too eagerly anticipated.

Granted, there are some highlights amongst the gloom. “Ataraxy” describes an elusive but pure serenity, while the joyful “apricity” translates to the warmth of the sun on a winter’s day. But these are rare smiles in an otherwise sombre picture.

Perhaps it is a reflection of our national tendency towards pessimism, but English is abstemious with its compliments and yet delivers insults with panache. From centuries past, the dictionary offers several epithets that could come in handy on today’s social media: a “stiffrump”, for example, is a reactionary who refuses to budge; the “ultracrepidarian” is one who loves to hold forth on subjects they know nothing about, and the “bloviator” is a perpetual blower of hot air.

Were you to look for similarly striking epithets for those who are fair, witty, or virtuous, you might well come up short. There is famously no synonym for love, yet we have an extensive thesaurus for hate. It’s more difficult to #BeKind when we don’t have the words to articulate it.

Where are the lost positives that once existed – the couth to go with the uncouth, the mayed, the ept, the wieldy and ruth, the gormful, reckful and feckful? Each has been nudged out by their wholly negative siblings, which continue to be aired with gusto.

Melancholy has found expression in so many ways – whether it’s the mubble-fubbles of the 16th century, or the blue devils and black dogs of the 17th. Some of our best-loved words are expressions of petulance, irritability, or sheer confusion – those like discombobulation, cantankerousness and curmudgeonly. Where are the terms for sunny, benign cheeriness? Even they tend to come with a sneer – a “gigglemug” is one who smiles too much, and so sets everyone else’s teeth on edge.

And yet, if you look hard enough beyond the frowns, you can still find sparkle in the corners of the dictionary. There are expressions to be had of positivity, of joy for others, and of happiness in the moment. Over the next few months, for example, we can hope to delight in “respair”: the unsung enemy of despair and which, in the 16th century at least, meant fresh hope and a recovery from despondency. And there is always “confelicity”: the unselfish joy in someone else’s pleasure.

Other positive words from a precious collection include “resipiscence”, the return to a better state of mind. The equally ungainly “redamancy” is worthy of mention simply because, uniquely in the vocabulary of love, it expresses the act of loving back. And we should all aspire to be “goodwilly” – well-disposed and benevolent towards others (the bonny counterpart to its darker siblings “ill-willy” and “evil-willy”).

Do other languages “do” happiness better? Certainly those of the Mediterranean sound as sunny and soothing as their skies and oceans. We can turn to many different tongues for the filling of stubborn gaps in our own language – to the Tagalog of the Philippines, for example, that offers gigil for the irresistible and joyful urge to squeeze something cute.

Tim Lomas, a lecturer in positive psychology at the University of East London, collects expressions of happiness from other languages, like the Chinese kǔ qù gān lái – a description of the journey through pain to sweetness and relief (we all need some of that).

Of course, other languages do longing and wistfulness beautifully too – whether it’s the Portuguese saudade or the Welsh hiraeth. Yearning and melancholy tend to go hand in hand, and many cultures capture the bitter-sweetness of a happiness that is destined to fade. The Japanese, for example, have aware: a brief moment of transcendent beauty, symbolised by the shortlived but overwhelming majesty of the cherry blossom.

Perhaps the etymology of “happiness” is the most telling. It is built upon the obsolete “hap”, meaning “chance” or “luck”, which typically survives only in the negative word “hapless”. But if our pessimism finds ample expression in the dictionary, proof exists that positivity can bring its own luck. Surely remembering the lost happinesses of our language would be a very good place to start.

Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in ‘Dictionary Corner’ on the Channel 4 quiz ‘Countdown’ since 1992.

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