U is for Opposite

“Are we okay?”

“What do you mean?” she asked without taking her eyes off the dishes.

“I don’t feel like we talk to each other anymore. Not properly. We say stuff in passing and throw words and sentences like a food fight at a birthday party. There’s no real connection.”

“’No connection,’ that’s an interesting phrase.”

Lilijana was a true champion of the put down, shutdown comment. Disturbingly unsympathetic.”

-          Loathe Your Neighbor ch.10

It would have been so easy to write about the ubiquity of umbrellas but I decided to sing the praises of a powerful prefix instead. Two letters which, when applied to the front of a word, turn the whole world upside down. Two letters that take what is good and make it bad. This deadly combination can make something useable into something unuseable, something wanted into something unwanted. That which is lovely, kind, righteous, or peaceful may be transformed in a flash. In spite of its reputation as a negative prefix it can also be a force for good. A humble person may consider themselves unworthy or undeserving while others deem them unselfish. Although it is not unnatural for writers to be unknown it is unquestionably uncomfortable for them to remain so. Alas the world is unfair and unwarranted actions undo the unassimilated and uninitiated. Unbeknownst to me this post has fallen into an unhealthy and unattractive assortment of unplanned dribble. Unfortunately, once begun an odyssey is not easily abandoned, and it would be unreasonable of you, the reader, to expect it of me. It may be unrealistic and unimaginably unwise, and calling a blog post an odyssey may be unadulterated hyperbole, but I beg your indulgence for I am not unaware that you are not uncaring souls, and you understand that un at the beginning of a word is not always a prefix. I am unfinished. What's your favourite un word?