bizarroland

The word trans means across, or on the other side, and gress once again would mean step, so to transgress is basically to cross the line, right?

I did a quick search, but there isn’t really a word to describe the people that don’t cross the line.

The opposite of the prefix trans is the prefix cis, which means “on the same side”

There is an etymology word joke that says something along the lines of, “if “pro” is the opposite of “con”, then is the opposite of “congress” “progress”?”

And if you don’t know etymology, then that seems to make sense.

When you break down the word Congress, you get the prefix con and the root word gress, con means with, and gress means step, so it means to step with or to walk with.

The opposite of walking with someone is to walk apart from someone, so, the actual opposite of congress would be digress, and the opposite of progress would be regress.

Etymology is great at ruining jokes, but it’s also great at helping you understand what words mean and why they mean them.

I think the specific is that 40% of adult Americans can’t read at a seventh grade level.

Probably because they stopped teaching etymology in schools, So now many Americans do not know how to break a word down into its subjugate parts.