In the February 1971 issue of Word Ways, Mary J. Youngquist pointed out that when element symbols are expanded, SATED becomes SULFURATED and FEY becomes IRONY.

That August, she, Philip Cohen, and Murray Pearce extended the list:

FEED = IRONED
AGED = SILVERED
SIC = SULFURIC
SNED = TINED
SNY = TINY
SOUS = SULFUROUS
SET = SULFURET
SING = SULFURING
SIZING = SULFURIZING
CUED = COPPERED

Likewise, BASIS yields BASILICONS, NAZI yields NEONAZI (and then NEONEONEONAZI, and so on forever), and RES can yield either RHENIUMS or RESULFUR.

07/09/2026 UPDATE: A number of readers point out that NAZI doesn’t work, as the symbol for neon is Ne. But JAR = JARGON! (Thanks Paul.)

In his 1987 book The Game of Words, Willard R. Espy offered a poem of “forgotten positives”:

I dreamt of a corrigible, nocuous youth,
Gainly, gruntled, and kempt;
A mayed and a sidious fellow, forsooth —
Ordinate, effable, shevelled, ept, couth;
A delible fellow I dreamt.

Correspondingly, he pointed out, many common words ending in -less seem to have no opposites ending in -ful:

A tailful dog, one leaf-ful spring
Set out for toothful foraging,
And as he dug in rootful sod,
Paid voiceful tribute to his God.
At which, a feckful, loveful lass,
Whose strapful bodice charmed each pass-
Erby, cried out, “O timeful sound!
O ageful, lifeful, peerful hound!”

07/09/2026 UPDATE: The New Yorker ran a piece on this theme in 1994. (Thanks, Steve.)

— The [Chicago] Day Book, July 18, 1916