Disgruntled

How to spell disgruntled

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disgruntled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disgruntled mean?

1. adjectiveAngry, resentful, or dissatisfied, especially after feeling treated unfairly.

Disgruntled in a sentence

• The disgruntled customer demanded a full refund at the counter.

• Several disgruntled employees resigned after the bonus scheme was scrapped.

Where does disgruntled come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the verb 'gruntle', which was a frequentative form of 'grunt', meaning to keep grunting or grumbling in low complaint. 'Grunt' itself goes back to Old English 'grunnettan', an imitation of the sound a discontented person or a pig makes, so the word began life as plain noise. The 'dis-' prefix attached in the early 1600s, and unusually it works here as an intensifier rather than its more familiar role of reversing a meaning, so 'disgruntled' means thoroughly grumbling rather than the opposite of grumbling. For a long time the cheerful back-formation 'gruntled', meaning pleased or contented, existed only as a joke, famously revived by P. G. Wodehouse. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the silent pattern of the unstressed second syllable and the cluster 'ntl' make people uncertain, even though the parts are simply dis + gruntle + ed.

How the word is built

• dis- (here an intensifier rather than a negative)
• gruntle (to grumble, a frequentative of grunt)
• -ed (past-participle/adjective suffix)