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Mon 19 Feb, 2018 07:38 am
Is "unconfident" the opposite of "confident"? If not, what is the correct word?
Thanks.
Yes it is, but I don't think it is much used by native speakers--at any event, I had to look it up to make certain that "unconfident" is actually a word. (My spell checker doesn't think it is.) There are many other words which a native speaker would use, depending on the context--such as hesitant, uncertain, apprehensive, unsure. I think in many contexts, one would say insecure.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
Yes it is, but I don't think it is much used by native speakers--at any event, I had to look it up to make certain that "unconfident" is actually a word. (My spell checker doesn't think it is.) There are many other words which a native speaker would use, depending on the context--such as hesitant, uncertain, apprehensive, unsure. I think in many contexts, one would say insecure.
Thanks, Setanta
.
In fact, 'inconfident' can also be found in some dictionaries. My spellchecker does reject 'unconfident', but it does 'inconfident'. It is strange that 'unconfident' word is seldom used by native speakers.
I suspect that is because there are so many descriptive terms which are more specific to the object's attitude.
"In fact, 'inconfident' can also be found in some dictionaries"
Really?
Are you thinking "in confidence"?
Context would help here.
@PUNKEY,
PUNKEY wrote:
"In fact, 'inconfident' can also be found in some dictionaries"
Really?
Are you thinking "in confidence"?
Context would help here.
inconfident - Wiktionary
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inconfident
Adjective. inconfident (comparative more inconfident, superlative most inconfident) (rare) unconfident; lacking confidence quotations ▼
Inconfident dictionary definition | inconfident defined - YourDictionary
www.yourdictionary.com › Dictionary Definitions › inconfident
inconfident. Adjective. (comparative more inconfident, superlative most inconfident) (rare) unconfident; lacking confidence.
Very often one might say "lacking in confidence" or something like that. The trouble is, the word 'confident' is used in many situations in slightly different ways:
As a personality trait, where 'timid' is a pretty direct antonym. John is a confident person; Peter is a timid person. Others are cowardly, timid, fearful, meek, uncertain.
As a feeling that someone might have about something - to express the opposite of "I am confident that the project will be completed on time" you might use 'doubtful'.
@tanguatlay,
I can't remember ever hearing either inconfident or unconfident. My spellchecker didn't like either one. Try not confident.
Tang has been told it's not normally used and to try another way .
He insists on it.
@PUNKEY,
PUNKEY wrote:
Tang has been told it's not normally used and to try another way .
He insists on it.
I have never insisted that "inconfident'' or "unconfident" is the opposite of "confident". I'm just surprised that although both words appear in dictionaries, they are not used by native speakers, and I have taken note of this. So I'm also surprised by the comment that I insisted on it.
Stop asking rhetorical questions.
Many thanks to all of you for your helpful replies.
@tanguatlay,
Anyd reasonably good dictionary ha a couple of hundred thousand words in it. I seem to remember lexicographers sayin there are close to a million words in English. I seem to remember somebody authoritative saying the average person knows about 20000 words. Don't be surprised that just because something is in a dictionary it doesn't mean that it is actually used.
@MontereyJack,
The Guardian did some research and put the average speaker's knowledge at a mere 12K words, they ssay it doesn't increase much after the age of 12.
@MontereyJack,
That leaves something like 980,000 words just gathering dust on the shelf.
@MontereyJack,
I was optimistic From th OED website
Quote:How many words are there in the English language?
There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word. Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verb meaning 'to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (e.g. dogs = plural noun, dogs = present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since it might also be written as hot-dog or even hotdog?
It's also difficult to decide what counts as 'English'. What about medical and scientific terms? Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Teenage slang? Abbreviations?
The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.
See other FAQs about language.
@MontereyJack,
Thanks, MontereyJack, for the information.
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