The “bones thread” prompted me to do some reading on the history of minstrel shows, which ultimately led to me getting sidetracked onto the subject of Vaudeville and other things, and I was reading an article that used a word I don’t recall having heard. Admittedly, I may be a yokel, and this may be standard English, but to my ears it doesn’t sound right. I could have consulted a dictionary, but decided to just ask it here. Is unhappier a proper word?
Sounds like it should be to me, and dictionary.com accepted it:
Does it mean not happier?
Or does it mean “even less happy than another who is unhappy”?
More unhappy?
The BBC says Bullies are even unhappier than their victims.
The New York Lawyer says that Americans in 2002 were unhappier at work.
He just kept getting happier and happier, but one day nothing delightful happened, so he got a little unhappier, till the next day when he got happier, still.
I don’t see why “unhappier” would be an incorrecter choice than any other.
Less untruer words could scarce be spoken.
Adam was unhappy because his dog died. Bertram was unhappy because his cat had diarrhea. Both Adam and Betram were unhappy. But Bertram was unhappier than Adam because his wife ran off with a Canadian.
I think unhappier will be avoided by careful writers. It is the negation of “happier” not the comparative of “unhappy,” which would be “more unhappy.” That form is exceedly ugly, and the best thing is to scratch the sentence and to start over. Avoiding “happy” altogether will improve the sentence and the thought, imho.
That being said, I find “unhappier” to have a decidedly Shakespearean ring to it.
I think the PC version of that is misunhappy or maybe misunderhappiated. Dishappy? Malhappy? Happyless?
I too would be unsadder if I just recast the sentence.
It’s “special happiness.” Albert had just lost his job. His car had been stolen. His doctor had told him that he had cancer. The bank was foreclosing on his house. And he was fresh out of beer. Albert was a special-happiness person.
That makes absolutely no sense… “unhappier” is really not the correct word.
In this day and age, Albert would be “happiness challenged”- no?
Tom
Reminds me of an ongoing argument my daughter has with school friends who claim that “funner” is not a “word.” It may not be “formal,” but even Webster’s recognizes it as a legitimate construction.
Redwolf
No fair entering your own writing contest, Bloomfield; this better not win…
Philo
But is it an unfunner construction than unhappier?
One of the earlier posts in this thread reminded me of something a friend said. A little background is necessary.
I have an autoimmune type of arthritis and was being treated for a while with a sulfa drug. Besides giving me headaches and an upset stomach, plus making me photosensitive, it resulted in my becoming severely anemic. The doctor (a board-certified jerk) took me off the sulfa drug but didn’t suggest an alternative for controlling the disease. So I was moving around cautiously because I was in pretty constant low-grade pain, and in this sorry state when I attended a wonderful wedding of two good friends. In the meet-and-greet that happens at these things, my friend Lisa summed up (quite accurately) my whole feelings about the sequence of events with:
“She’s under-happy.”
M
PS–You know those annoying commercials for Enbrel? It’s approved for psoriatic arthritis too. I have to give myself a shot twice a week but I’m symptom-free–thank God and anybody/anything who should also get credit.
In the nineties, Albert would have been happiness challenged. It sounds too judgmental and hide-bound for the new millenium. We should all remember that special-happiness persons like Albert may be valuable members of society and that they have their own unique voice. In the case of Albert this is true at least until he gets his hands on some beer, at which point he will become a special-soberness person.