Opposites Word Search

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happy

Happy comes from the old word hap, meaning luck or chance, the same root inside happen, perhaps, and mishap.

angry

Angry began as a feeling of being tight or pinched: its root meant narrow, the same idea behind anguish and anxious.

gigantic

Gigantic comes from the Giants of Greek myth, the Gigantes, who battled the gods and were said to lie buried beneath volcanoes.

delicate

Delicate comes from a Latin word meaning charming or giving pleasure, only later shifting toward the sense of easily damaged.

ancient

Ancient traces back to a Latin word meaning before, the same root that gives us ancestor and antique.

distant

Distant comes from Latin meaning standing apart, sharing its root with distance, instant, and the very act of standing.

generous

Generous once meant of noble birth; only later did it come to mean giving freely, sharing a root with genus and gene.

cheerful

Cheer once meant the face or expression, so a cheerful person literally showed a bright and welcoming face.

shallow

Shallow and shoal are cousins, both describing water so low that boats risk scraping their hulls on the bottom.

crooked

A crook is a bent shepherd's staff, which is why anything bent is crooked and a dishonest person is a crook.

slender

Slender has no clear ancestor; its origin is genuinely unknown, one of many everyday English words with a mysterious past.

smooth

Smooth is one of few English words that keep the old -th ending as a verb: you can smooth a wrinkled sheet.

narrow

The narrows of a river or strait borrow this word directly, naming the tightest, most squeezed stretch of the water.

silent

Silent comes from a Latin verb meaning to be still, the same root behind the pause we call a silence.

gentle

Gentle, gentleman, and genteel all descend from a Latin word for good family, once marking rank before it meant mildness.

In their words