I was having a telephone conversation with a friend and we got to tallking about the word 'gruntle'. She looked it up in her dictionary and told me that the verb 'to gruntle' means "to grumble, murmour or complain" and that its origin goes back to 1589 (page 839 in Volume 1 of the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary, 3rd Edition, 1979). I looked up the word in my Collins English Dictionary (page 648, 1979) where I found the adjective 'gruntled' along with the definition "happy or contended; satisfied". In order to resolve this apparent inconsistency in meaning, I turned to Wiktionary where I found the following statement: "Gruntle is today considered obsolete and is not in normal usage. Gruntled is used only humorously as the imagined opposite of disgruntled" - see here. Apparently, the word 'disgruntled' is of American origin; it therefore appears that 'gruntle' left the UK. went to America and had its meaning changed!
I wonder if 'disappointment' is the opposite of 'appointment'?
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