Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Opposites detract.

I was walking back from lunch with Adrian, one of my coworkers, when we passed an ad for Virgin Atlantic along the sidewalk. Across the top in bold white letters over a background of red and purple, it read, “Leave disgruntled. Arrive gruntled.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Adrian remarked. “I don’t think ‘gruntled’ really sounds that much better than ‘disgruntled’.”

“Yeah, sometimes trying to opposite-ify a word just doesn’t work,” I replied. “It might as well have read, ‘Leave pissed-off. Arrive pissed-on.’”