On the disappearing antonyms of “grumpy” words

On the disappearing antonyms of “grumpy” words
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I have sometimes written a word, and then stared at it, and been unable to say whether I had invented it on the spot as a (hopefully) obvious form using regular patterns, or if I had seen it before and dredged it up. And maybe there is overlap there. Recollection is recreation in memory, and the irregular patterns beckon sometimes.

We see this elsewhere, besides adjectives. English has not used the strong conjugations of Old English in a thousand years for new verbs, generally. We retain hundreds of semi-irregular verbs from that. Sing, sang, sung. Sink, sank, sunk, sunken. Think, thought. Drag, drug, druggen/drawn. Some of these may not be current in your dialect anymore. I say dragged.

What's fun is when new verbs are invented, or when old verbs morph into new forms. "To sneak" is an old verb which was regularized in Middle English along with the rest. Sneak, sneaked. For about ~500 years things could only have sneaked. Then in the late 19th century in America we start hearing "snuck" as the past tense. That's now standard in my dialect and is creeping back into UK English, even. It's irresistible sometimes. "Thunk" was once the past form of to "to think" in some dialects. It is gone from nearly all for centuries now. That doesn't stop me from saying it once in a while for some reason; it just seems natural.

  To gruntle meant making little grunty complaining sounds all the time