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Notes -
There are many words in the English language which are formed using a prefix or a suffix, but for which the antonym formed by removing that prefix or suffix (or using the opposite prefix or suffix) is never used. There are even a handful of cases in which two compound words can be formed using a prefix and its antonymic prefix, but the word itself is never used in isolation, or has a vastly different meaning than would be inferred based on the meaning of the two compound words. Some examples:
Can you think of any other good examples?
1 Obviously this word does see use on some occasions, and yet it isn't strictly an antonym for "misinterpret": "misinterpret" specifically denotes an inaccurate interpretation, whereas "interpret" is equivocal on whether the interpretation was accurate or not.
2 We move here into the realm of pedantry, as while this word does see use, it's not used as an antonym of "pitiless": rather, it denotes someone deserving of pity, which is more properly denoted by "pitiable". See also "nauseous"/"nauseated". In other cases people get this distinction right e.g. "contemptuous"/"contemptible".
3 See also "interpret": unlike "to overrate" and "to underrate", "to rate" does not pass judgement on whether the assessment was a fair or accurate one. Confusingly, "to rate" also carries a colloquial meaning of "to think highly of, to commend"; when Roy Keane said of Mick McCarthy, "... I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager, and I don't rate you as a person..." he meant that he didn't think highly of him in any of these capacities. This runs contrary to the word's usual meaning of "to assess", which includes both positive and negative assessments.
4 See also "rate".
5 There was a British comedian (it might have been Lee Evans) who once quipped that every actor who appears in a porn film is denoted a porn star, which is not the standard we apply to actors in general, only a minority of whom can be called "stars". "Where are all the porn actors?"
6 As distinct of its meaning "to undertake a task".
"Rate" seems to me like it is indeed used as you describe. Someone's accoplishments can "rate", or properly deserve, praise. A work of art can be "rated highly". There are plenty of industries in which saying that someone's job is to rate, or grade or assess, quality or purity would be perfectly logical.
I believe that "rueful" is both the true antonym for "ruthless" (not scrupulous) and actually a word for which the suffix change is fairly normal. Not sure why this one is slightly irregular... "faithful" exists, as does "shoeless", so the problem would appear to be with "ruthless". Perhaps "rueless" is just too wimpy a collection of sounds for this idea.
For abuse, I have always thought of it being the opposite of disabuse in that an abused person's thought process, etc, is being abused by incorrect notions. Thus, to disabuse is to free someone from a figurative abuser.
A fun example to add to the list (possibly) is inchoate, which means not fully formed. Apparently, lawyers do use the implied antonym choate, but Scalia has long criticized this because the "in" here is not in fact a negative prefix, so creating the implied antonym is nonsenical. Personally, I have always thought of coalesced as a good opposite. https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_dictionaries_accept_choate_although_scalia_has_long_disagreed
But my point was that the adjectives "overrated" and "underrated" refer to instances in which the assessment of an item's quality was considered to be inaccurate, either too generous or too harsh, respectively. To me this implies that "to rate" something is to make an accurate assessment of its quality. But I don't think it really does carry this de-/con-notation: much as with "interpret", the verb "to rate" is equivocal on whether the resulting assessment was a fair or accurate one.
Hmm, I do think that "to rate" implies accuracy, even if a rating does not necessarily imply the same, perhaps a controversial take in performance review season, but I think of that as "giving ratings" rather than "rating".
But then this gives us the prefix issue of that it being clear that an undercooked dish has not been cooked enough and that an overcooked dish has been cooked too much, a common sense application of over/under. What, then, does it mean to do insufficient/excessive accurate assessment? (Since this was all still very common sense with cook, perhaps over/under are just not good prefixes for us to do this with at all.)
It's interesting again because the words "overrated" and "underrated" are only ever used in the context of qualitative assessments which are extremely subjective, namely those of artistic works. "Breaking Bad is an overrated TV show" sounds normal; "the bridge collapsed because the inspector overrated the quality of the steel used in its construction" sounds weird, even if that's literally what happened.
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