JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Earlier this month I wrote two posts on the un-prefix in words occurring in Joyce’s Ulysses and in Webster’s 1828 dictionary–there were many surprises, including an entire category of new words outside their original intentions. One example that came up today, flushed out while reading in a very erudite but long-nosed and very sniffily dismissive work by F.W. Bussell (Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages, published in 1918).  The author was a man of very deep and long learning who wrote a bit, thick-as-a-brick-or-two book of high physical appeal. It seemed to me though that his understanding of some “foreign” religions did not broaden his own appreciation of difference in cultures, as some of the heretical belief systems included Buddhism and Hinduism. 

As much as Bussell seems to put god into various religious equations, he more than occasionally proves judgmental in taking god out of others. Here’s a sampel from Mr. Bussell:

It’s a difficult go. 

And rightly or wrongly it brought up ungod/ungodded/ungoding, the words I bumped into in Webster’s, and so their appearance in the OED: