Words That Sound Unlike Their Meaning
The other day I was thinking about words that sound like the opposite of their definitions. It’s a pretty subjective exercise, but these are the three that occurred to me:
natty - It means ‘dapper’, but I always think of gnats. Plus, words that end in ‘ty’ tend to seem negative to me–’dirty’, ‘gritty’, ‘faulty’ and so forth.
quotidian - A very peculiar word to describe something that’s commonplace. The ‘q’ suggests that it ought to refer to something exotic.
solvent - As in, ‘having enough money’. I learned the other, more quotidian (heh) definition first, and I always imagined that it should mean that you didn’t have enough money–that it had dissolved.
In university, I was offered some (relatively-speaking) high-paying work by a prof in my department. He brought me into his office and asked me ‘how solvent are you these days?’ I didn’t know that usage at the time, so I replied ‘ah, you know, as solvent as the next guy’. I don’t know if I fooled him or not.
What words do you think sound the opposite of what they mean?
GeoffD 
-j. 
CJ 