Discomforten

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Making a person feel unsettled, uneasy or physically ill at ease, as an archaic verb meaning to cause discomfort
2. To cause someone to feel uneasy, anxious or physically unsettled, an older verb for making another person uncomfortable
3. Causing another to lose their ease or composure, a rare and archaic way of saying to make someone feel uncomfortable

Etymology: The surprising part is in the root. "Comfort" comes through Old French "conforter" from Latin "confortare," meaning "to strengthen greatly," built from "con-" (an intensifying prefix) and "fortis," "strong." Comfort was first a matter of bolstering someone's strength or resolve, and only later came to mean easing their distress. The sense of ease is the later one, not the original. "Discomforten" adds two English layers. The prefix "dis-" reverses or removes the quality, so "discomfort" means the opposite of ease. The ending "-en" is an old English verb-forming suffix, the same one found in "lengthen," "sadden," and "widen," which turns a noun or adjective into a verb meaning "to make" or "to become" that thing. So the word means roughly "to make uncomfortable." It is a rare, self-explanatory formation rather than a term with a long documented history of its own.