I’ve seen a lot of headlines like this one in the past 24 hours:
Jury: Moussaoui is eligible for death
My co-worker, for whom English is a second language, pointed it out to me: Doesn’t “eligible” mean something good? he asked.
According to the dictionaries I checked, usually. You find the words “worthy” and “desirable” in there, and even though those words aren’t necessary to all uses of “eligible,” the connotation lingers.
But I can’t think of a substitute. There’s no opposite of “eligible.” Okay, wrong. There’s “ineligible.” But there’s no word meaning “qualified for a negative distinction or event,” which would be opposite eligible’s connotation of “qualified for a positive distinction or event.”
If a movie is excellent, you might say it’s Oscar-worthy. If it sucks, do you say it’s Raspberry-worthy? Isn’t “worthy” also implicitly positive?
