Question for today

[dianec42]

What is the opposite of "complain"?

Comments

[merde.livejournal.com]

laugh? celebrate? applaud? praise?

[richenza.livejournal.com]

commend

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that, but the words are used differently.

I dare say "Squee" works.

[anneb.livejournal.com]

"replain?"

Maybe it's just STFU. (-;

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

"praise", "applaud", "laud" (for short), "compliment", "recommend"

And more to the point, why can you not retrieve this from your mind? Are you beset? Should we send cookies?

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Rejoice? Endure? Pock?

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

laud?

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

This came up at the lunch table, so we over-analyzed it to death, as is our wont. We decided there are just too many aspects to complaining to narrow it down to a single antonym.

Then I went to look in the office thesaurus (making a quick side trip to smack Brent for asking "Aren't those extinct?") and discovered that our Roget's II does not list antonyms.

It was an interesting enough lunchtime topic that I thought I'd share.

[qidane.livejournal.com]

To waiter - "Yes, fine , lovely, thanks."
To friends - (whisper)"Its ok, we just won't come here again."

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

The hard part about finding the antonym to "complain" is the word has to have the same sentence usage.

You can complain about things.
You can complain to someone.

You don't laud to someone.
You don't compliment about things.

Squee, however...

You squee to someone. You can squee about things.

Heck, you can even be a "chronic squeer", which I think is kinda cool.