The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

by Bill Bryson

And we have a large number of negative words—inept, disheveled, incorrigible, ruthless, unkempt—for which the positive form is missing. English would be richer if we could say admiringly of a tidy person, “She’s so sheveled,” or praise a capable person for being full of ept or an energetic one for having heaps of ert.