One handy way to coin a new word in English — if the new word is meant to be a negative version of another word that already exists — is to add “dis-“ as a prefix. That’s how English got words like “dishonest,” “disconnect,” and “discontent.” But this is a relatively new practice in the annals of the language. Not only that, the way we now think of the prefix “dis-” is not at all the same as it was used in the distant past.
Before “dis-“ was added to words to make a negative version, it was used to make a stronger statement about something. So if you take the very old (and obsolete) word “dissever,” it means the same as “sever” — to separate or cut off — but it was used as a more emphatic version of the root word. The same is true of “disannul;” when you annul something you cancel or abolish it, and when you “disannul” the same thing, you really, really get rid of it once and for all. Y’know, like that time you found yourself in a horror movie and finally dispatched the monster (or…did you)/
“Disgruntle” is another one of these. You sometimes run into a humorous usage assuming that “gruntle” would be its opposite, as P.G. Wodehouse did in 1938’s “The Code of the Woosters:” “He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.” But really “disgruntled” didn’t mean the opposite of “gruntled:” it means “even more gruntled.”
“Gruntled” really is a word, or at least it was. It dates back to the 1400s: “spekez noȝt, bot gruntils as swyne duse.” (Mandeville’s Travels). A more recent, and thus more comprehensible use is from 1591: “It becommeth vs not to haue our hearts heir gruntling vpon this earth.“ (from the Edinburgh Sermons by Robert Bruce). When “gruntled” was in use, it had two meanings. There was the one that matches “disgruntled;” being grumpy and complaining, and another, even older meaning that simply meant “grunting:” “So, so; the boars begin to gruntle at one another: set up your bristles now a’ both sides.” (John Dryden, 1679)
But…remember the way Wodehouse used “gruntled” in 1938? It turns out that marked a resurgence of “gruntled,” or possibly its appearance as a completely new word that really does mean the opposite of “disgruntled.” “Gruntled” is now in dictionaries, defined as “happy or contented,” and it’s listed as dating back precisely to 1938. It’s still not in widespread use though, so it’s hard to tell whether the new meaning of “gruntled” as the opposite of “disgruntled” has left people disgruntled or gruntled about the whole affair.
