Images 14: Holidays and other strangeness

[DHBirr]

.... Huh.  Gonna have to see if I can spot more words like this.

That also implies the existence of the verb "to gruntle", meaning "to please, to satisfy"...  you would expect to find it in older works, like maybe Shakespeare, but honestly I've never come across it.

According to my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (1993), the earliest print usage of "gruntle" (in the above sense) the compilers were able to find dated to 1926.  This dictionary states that "gruntle" is a back-formation from "disgruntle" (first print example dated 1682) ... however, under "disgruntle" in the same dictionary I find an earlier "gruntle," lacking a separate entry but explained as originally a Middle-English verb-form for "grunt" which came to be more-or-less synonymous with "grumble." 

It's not made clear how adding "dis-" to a word meaning "grumble" modified it to what we today have in mind when we say "disgruntle."  But one less-commonly-used meaning of "dis-" seems to be "completely" – the example given is that to "disannul" something doesn't negate annulment, instead apparently adding emphasis to annulment. 

More information than anybody wanted or needed:  just another disservice I nit-pickingly provide.

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Up, lad, up!  We've villages to pillage, maidens to slay, and dragons to rescue!