Do You “Peel An Orange” Or “Unpeel An Orange”?
A Real Conversation I Had About Oranges:
Friend 1 — “Omg [Friend 3] you literally just got orange peels everywhere!”
Friend 2 — “Yeah [Friend 3] you always make such a mess when you unpeel your oranges!”
Friend 3 — “You mean when I peel an orange.”
Me — “Huh.”
Friend — “Yeah. You peel an orange, not unpeel, right?”
Eventually, this conversation spiraled into a peel vs. unpeel argument. Both words have the definition of “removing an outer covering.” So, which one do you use?
If you were to advocate for peel, then you would mention how peel already has a negative connotation, and thus the un- is redundant. If you were to advocate for unpeel, then you would mention how unpeel refers to removing (negating) the peel of something. Both seem correct in their own lights.
The answer to this dilemma is complex and dives into cognitive science and linguistics. Essentially, because the concept of negation manifests itself in various ways in the English language, English speakers have trouble discerning peel from unpeel.
The Concept of Negation
Negation in words can manifest explicitly or implicitly. Words with explicit negation will almost always have a negative prefix, such as in-, un-, non-, de-, dis-, a-, anti-, im-, il-, and ir-.
President Nixon was seen as the first to deregulate a major industry in the United States.
This sentence is explicitly negative as the word itself (denotation) signifies something of the negative or opposite manner (deregulate: to do the opposite of regulate).
With implicit negation, there is almost never a negative prefix, and the negation derives from the connotation itself.
John’s in-laws commented about his bald head.
In this specific case, the negation comes from the societal and cultural contexts, our society often frowns upon being bald, evidenced by the hair growth products that are widely advertised. Nevertheless, bald doesn’t have a negative root. But the reader of this sentence understands that John is without hair. The reader can further infer that John’s in-laws don’t feel too happy about his baldness. All of this points to the implicit negation in the word bald.
So What Does This Have To Do With Oranges?
The verb unpeel can’t easily be defined as having explicit or implicit negation. While unpeel has the negative prefix -un, if we were to apply that prefix to the remaining word then we would end up with to do the opposite of peel. Clearly, this isn’t the case, as that would essentially mean to repeel an orange, which is virtually impossible. Nevertheless, unpeel also has implicit negation. To unpeel an orange clearly means to remove the peel. But because we know that -un is invalid as the negator of the verb peel, the verb unpeel derives its negativity from societal context (imagine a person unpeeling a fruit). This complex relationship ultimately shrouds whether unpeel is explicitly or implicitly negative. This is what causes the confusion over peel and unpeel.
Are There Other Words With This Same Problem?
Unless new words are made up, peel and unpeel is the best if not the only demonstration of this dilemma. Similar linguistical arguments could be made about zip and unzip (both verbs involve zipping, just in a different direction) and do and undo (to do the opposite of do would literally be nothing, and undoing something is still doing something). But these examples don’t live up to the chronicle of our oranges.
In the end, I think it’s important to also understand the impact of colloquialisms on our cognitive understanding of words. Before the “orange conversation” came up, I never thought twice about whether I said peel or unpeel and which one would be correct. I’m sure there are other English dilemmas that we don’t even think twice about because they sound so natural to us.
