gormless

Citation on salinity.

The beasts stood with heads lowered dejectedly against the wooden hoot-pieces of their stalls. Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, and Aimless awaited their turn to be milked. Sometimes Aimless ran her dry tongue, with a rasping sound sharp as a file through silk, awkwardly across the bony flank of Feckless, which was still moist with the rain that had fallen upon it through the roof during the night, or Pointless turned her large dull eyes sideways as she swung her head upwards to tear down a mouthful of cobwebs from the wooden runnet above her head.
....
'Be that as it may,' shouted another voice, strange to Flora. 'Graceless' has lost a leg! Where is it? Answer me that, ye doithering old man. Who will buy Graceless now when I take her down to Beershorn Market? Who wants a cow wi' only three legs, saving some great old circus man looking round for freakies to put in his show?'

Cold Comfort Farm. (Stella Gibbons)

I always though Hap hooked up with Hope. 'Less I'm wrong, of course.

A place where everyone is happy: a gormitory

Hap is hung up somewhere in a Beckett play. Guile Lombardo formed a band and went on to become famous.

The first post on this page is the funniest thing I think I've ever read on Wordie. Also, I used to work with a guy named Hap...

I thought it was Hap.

Didn't Ruth run off with that fellow Guile?

Don't stop, sionnach. Your equation of ruth, feck and gorm with Lear's daughters is a thing of dazzling genius.

Ruth was last seen hamming it up in some Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. There may have been some piratical involvement.

It seems fair to point out that the character of Ruth is entirely different from her counterparts Feck and Gorm. One might think of her as Cordelia to their Regan and Goneril. But to refer to her as Cord would only introduce a whole nother layer of anachronistic metaconfusion.

I'll stop now. Promise.

And where's Ruth?

Research shows that a lack or loss of gorm is often accompanied by a concomitant loss of feck.

I would say disconcerted means you are no longer giving a concerted effort, so the term holds. Also, you have a word like handful, but clearly you wouldn't ever need handless, it is a meaning full concept. Something can be full of wonder, or it can be normal.

Thanks, bilby! And if I may, here's a sillier list of such words--not exactly orphan negatives, but you get the idea. :-)

I think the generic name for these critters is orphan negatives, ie. there is no 'parent' word such as gorm, gruntled, etc.

Concerted certainly exists though not with opposite polarity to disconcerted but another meaning, while wonderless is plausible but (for the time being) not in use.

You'd probably enjoy meeting reesettee's wife.

gormful
wonderful
wonderless
disgruntled
gruntled
disconcerted
concerted?

Where's my gorm at?

ADJECTIVE: Chiefly British Lacking intelligence and vitality; dull.
ETYMOLOGY: From dialectal gawm, sense, from Middle English gome, notice, from Old Norse gaumr.

ROFL! (I'm in a meeting right now, or I really would be.)

OH SHIT WHO TOOK ALL MY GORM