Auto-Antonyms

http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html

by rsj_hn • 7 years ago

300 229 7 years ago

fun-with-words.com

torgard• 7 years ago

I had not heard of this term before!

And the inclusion of literally made me smile

krab• 7 years ago

Did it literally make you smile? :-)

empath754• 7 years ago

The inclusion of what literally made you smile?

stOneskull• 7 years ago

my favourite type of word. although i refuse to accept the new definition of literally to mean figuratively. i want it taken back.

thechao• 7 years ago

The word “literally” is an intensifier; do you have the same objection to the use of ‘really’, or ‘actually’? ‘Literally’ was first used to mean “from the text” in the late 17th c. By the early 19th c. it was already fully co-opted as an intensifier.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 7 years ago

It still doesn't feel like "literally" has been fully co-opted to me, at least not for anyone who isn't a teenager. I'd same the same about "actually", but I don't think I've even heard teenagers use it as a mere intensifier.

ben509• 7 years ago

My theory of literally is that it's being used to indicate a literal rendition of the speaker's mental state. So it doesn't mean figuratively, it means "this exclamation is the most direct rendering of how I feel about this. " That is, it's literal because nothing was changed from the verbal impulse that immediately sprang to mind.

achairapart• 7 years ago

I expected to find the word blues in it.

meuk2• 7 years ago

Suggestion:

    leave (verb)
    1. To go away
    2. To keep in place

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 7 years ago

covered already by "left", its past-tense form

meuk2• 7 years ago

That was an oversight from my side ;)

thaumasiotes7• 7 years ago

Not really an autoantonym, as the syntax of the sentence will only ever permit one or the other. ("Left" [remaining] is passive, while "left" [went away] is intransitive and therefore cannot be passive.)

tyingq• 7 years ago

I like the 3rd definition of this word: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trump

drcongo• 7 years ago

It also means fart in British English. It was quite funny that the US had a President Fart for about 3 minutes until the reality set in.

4ndr3vv• 7 years ago

Similarly inverted: Johnson

chrisweekly• 7 years ago

Cool site / fun list. But -- and I realize this is pedantic, though if ever there were a time/place for it, it's commentary on a grammar site -- I feel "resign" doesn't quite belong on it. Resign (to sign again) is pronounced with a soft "ess", while (to quit) uses a "z" sound; they're different words w/ different pronunciations that happen to share the same spelling. Doesn't that make them homographs? Is there a special term for this case, perhaps homographic antonym, or anto-homograph?

empath754• 7 years ago

A lot of people would spell the first one re-sign.

Spare_account• 7 years ago

Indeed the function of the hyphenation is to avoid confusion with the homograph.

jefftk• 7 years ago

The list is ones with the same spelling. If we went with same pronunciation we could add raise/raze.

smudgymcscmudge3• 7 years ago

Resign doesn’t really belong on this list. It isn’t an antonym of itself. Resign and resign are homographs with opposite(ish) meanings.

XaspR8d• 7 years ago

Yeah, but that's a really challenging line to draw diachronically.

For example, clip = to fasten originates from Old English `clyppan` (to embrace/clasp/surround), while clip = to cut originates somewhere Scandanavian, as in Old Norse' `klippa` (to clip/shear). Are those still homographs? I think a fair number of the list items are the result of convergent evolution.

oxxrs• 7 years ago

It's a heteronym, see[1]. And etymologically they seem to be related, the sense "quit" dating back to the 14th century while the sense "sign again" a more recent addition, 19th century [2]

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heteronym

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resign

rdiddly2• 7 years ago

While we're at it, literally doesn't belong on it. Literally has exactly one meaning. Unsurprisingly, the wrong meaning is the opposite of the right one.

Still think this list would help every struggling learner of English.

crazygringo• 7 years ago

You're literally wrong. :) Literally has two meanings in the dictionary, one of which is your "wrong" one:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

You may be interested in linguistic descriptivism, as opposed to linguistic prescriptivism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description

adrianmonk2• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, "literally" has acquired the non-literal meaning because people use it as an intensifier:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...

Include me among those who find it frustrating, but the meanings of words are more or less acquired by convention, and I think my side has been outvoted on this one.

taco_emoji2• 7 years ago

The "figuratively" sense is just bog-standard hyperbole. Do you also object to "killed" in the sense of a stand-up comedian getting a lot of laughter during their act? Or "I just died of embarrassment!"?

air73• 7 years ago

This literally happens a lot. See "How far back in time could you go and still understand English?" [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fxy6ZaMOq8

lonelappde3• 7 years ago

Pronunciation isn't part of writing, though. As you note, oral language and written language are not isomorphic.

tngranados• 7 years ago

Aladeen submission.

coldpie3• 7 years ago

With all the political discussion about Britain recently, the table/table antonym described in this list has come up among my friends lately. In Britain, you "table" a motion to put it up for consideration. In the US, if a motion is "tabled" it is put off until later. Very closely related but directly opposite meanings makes for some confusing discussions, where you need to know the nationality of the writer to have any chance of understanding the statement.

J-dawg• 7 years ago

A couple of others that baffle this British English speaker:

- "I could care less" meaning "I couldn't care less"

- "Entrée" meaning a main dish rather than a starter

kdmccormick• 7 years ago

I take "I could care less" to mean "I could care even less about this than I already do, that's how little it matters to me", but that could just be me trying to rationalize a mangled expression.

FPGAhacker• 7 years ago

“I could care less” is a bastardization if couldn’t care less. I have no source but I sincerely doubt “could care less” was the original usage.

Another one is the pattern “all X are not Y.” Vs “not all X are Y.”

tardismechanic• 7 years ago

It’s okay. The queen asked David Mitchell to have a quick word with Americans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

hanoz2• 7 years ago

Do many people really say "I could care less" instead of "couldn't"? I've never heard anyone say it, and the few times I've seen it used online the perpetrator has rightly been rounded upon.

If people do, what similar turns of phrase would they likewise mangle? "Well done son, I could be more proud", or "I'm completely thrilled, I could be happier", or "I'm at rock bottom, things could be worse".

marzell6• 7 years ago

-I could/couldn't care less: I feel this started out properly as "couldn't" and then people got lazy/used shortcuts in their speech. Very much like a "for all intentional purposes" type of phrase that has been incorrectly said -Entree: again just speculation... I think the US usage of this may have come from European multicourse meals... depending on the number of courses, you may start with hors d'oeuvres, soup, salad, etc... then move on to a First (Entree) and a Second as mains, before moving on to the wrap up with aperitifs, coffee, dessert, etc. As restaurants become more popular and accessible to the lower/working classes, courses were consolidated, and what was once called Entree/opener as a first main dish became the primary course of the meal.

DanBC• 7 years ago

There are a few people who think there's potentially a Yiddish aspect to "could care less". I don't know if this is accepted or not.

"In Defense of I Could Care Less": https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/why-i-could-care-le...

A number of language writers have suggested that “could care less” has a sarcastic reading, conveying something like “Ha! As if there were something in the world I could care less about.” There are some American Yiddish-inflected phrases that work this way, like “I should be so lucky!” (meaning “there’s no way I’m ever gonna be that lucky”) or “I should care!” (why should I care?). Even if “could care less” didn’t originate from a sarcastic intent, it matches up well enough with these other forms in the language to help give it staying power.

"Caring About Whether You Couldn’t Care Less": https://www.dictionary.com/e/could-care-less/

I particularly like this argument from this second link:

The argument of logic falls apart when you consider the fact that both these phrases are idioms. In English, along with other languages, idioms aren’t required to follow logic, and to point out the lack of logic in one idiom and not all idioms is…illogical. Take the expression “head over heels,” which makes far less sense than “heels over head” when you think about the physics of a somersault. It turns out “heels over head” entered English around 1400, over 250 years before “head over heels,” however, the “logical” version of this idiom hasn’t been in popular usage since the late Victorian era.

BjoernKW2• 7 years ago

“moot” is another one.

In British English it means “disputable” while in American English it means “hypothetical”.

alanbernstein2• 7 years ago

I'm not familiar with either of those meanings. To me it means something like "irrelevant".

Grue3• 7 years ago

"Terrific" used to be a synonym for "terrible", and "awesome" for "awful". Even the word "bad" has a slang meaning of "good".

In Japanese 適当 is supposed to mean "appropriate, proper", but in practice it almost always means "unserious, sloppy, careless". Not sure how that came about.

smudgymcscmudge3• 7 years ago

Terrific is my favorite autoantonym, but at this point the “terror causing” definition is little more than entomology trivia.

kranner• 7 years ago

To quote the old joke, confusing entomology and etymology bugs me in ways I cannot put into words.

Lxr• 7 years ago

Similar to 厉害 in Chinese - it often translates as terrible, but mostly used to mean great.

gwd8• 7 years ago

"Awesome" and "Aweful" have similar etymologoies: both mean, "Inspiring or creating awe". But one has morphed into, "really good", and the other into "really bad".

thaumasiotes7• 7 years ago

I believe "terrible" in the sense given for 厉害 is as in "I am Oz, the great and terrible", not the ordinary sense of the word.

UIZealot2• 7 years ago

Can you give an example where it means terrible? I can't think of any.

m12k2• 7 years ago

Now I wonder if there's a general term for words that ought to be antonyms but are actually synonyms. An example would be flammable and inflammable.

limomium• 7 years ago

That's just terrorific!

cardiffspaceman• 7 years ago

A passage in the "Vogue book of manners" from the '30's insisted that one never, ever say that a woman's dress was terrific, with literally no explanation.

raldi• 7 years ago

I used to work on a San Francisco team with a Zurich counterpart, mostly staffed with people of Italian descent. There was a quite confusing situation once involving a misunderstanding of my use of "terrific"; they thought I was calling something horrifyingly bad. Another such situation went something like this:

Me: "I tried what you suggested and now everything's hunky-dory."

Them, 12 hours later: "Well if you're going to complain about my suggestion, I wish you'd have at least explained what was wrong with it.

AndrewOMartin• 7 years ago

"quite" can be used to mean "entirely". "He was quite dead", "It was quite the worst thing I ever saw".

It also means "partially". "It was quite nice", etc.

I think this comes from people using the phrase "It was quite good" in cases when they weren't hugely impressed.

oceliker• 7 years ago

I read somewhere that American and British usage of “quite” is different — Americans use it to mean “entirely”, while British use it to mean “fairly”.

smudgymcscmudge3• 7 years ago

That’s interesting. I’m an American who frequently talks to brits, and I’ve never picked up on the different meaning of quite. I’ll make a point to listen for that in the future.

dspillett2• 7 years ago

English English speaker here: quite is often used both ways. While it is defined as meaning "fairly" it is usually used to mean a little more than that ("the weather is quite nice" means somewhere between "the weather is fair" and "the weather is nice"), it is also used to mean entirely but usually in a sarcastic manner where the juxtaposition of the entirelyness of your intent and the fairlyness of the actually meaning of the word stands out ("oh, you are quite wrong there"). Also, in combination with a negative it usually means entirely (as in "the job isn't quite done yet").

These are far from hard & fast rules though. In spoken situations the intended meaning is generally obvious from tone, in written text it can be quite ambiguous.

There is at least one use where the word means both at once: when it is used on its own: Person one: "The man is an utter 'king imbecile", Person two: "Quite" or P1: "WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!", P2: "Quite". Here it means "I agree (on a binary yes/no level) but I wouldn't put it that strongly". Similar to how "indeed" is often used.

OJFord• 7 years ago

I'm British; are you quite sure about that?

:trollface: it's definitely used both ways, but always clear from context I would say.

1-6• 7 years ago

set = to put in place, to replace

pure-awesome2• 7 years ago

I'm surprised "original" didn't make the list.

For example, consider "An original telling of the story" vs "The original telling of the story".

torben-friis• 7 years ago

I'm not sure that qualifies as auto antonyms.

Original means the origin/birth in both examples, the difference lies not in the meaning of original but in the word it affects (The telling, or the story itself)

thrwaaayr488• 7 years ago

Great list! My favorite is on it. The verb "sanction" is my "favorite" since the two meanings are both political and totally opposite. If you just read "the United States sanctioned the action" you have literally no idea if it means they expressly allowed it, no problem go right ahead, or if it means they were so mad they did something negative in response, oh, we're punishing you for that. I would say you can't even use the word for that reason.

bandrami• 7 years ago

Because of oversight, the activity was sanctioned.

I love how that sentence yields 4 possible meanings.

ScottBurson9• 7 years ago

I think the two meanings of "oversight" are not quite interchangeable. One is a mass noun (used without an article): "better oversight is needed"; while the other is a count noun (used with an article): "it was an oversight". So "because of oversight" sounds odd to me; I think it would be "because of an oversight", which would unambiguously indicate the "error" sense.

pure-awesome2• 7 years ago

Honestly, usage of the word "sanction" should just be sanctioned.

kjhughes• 7 years ago

So you sanction that 'sanction' be sanctioned?

lonelappde3• 7 years ago

It is.

gumby2• 7 years ago

The contradictory meaning of "sanction" is very recent and dates to the 90s (referring to trade restrictions on Iraq). Because it's so new it really annoys me (as opposed to, say, cleave).

When I hear it I still hear as it was used: we (was it the UN? US? I can no longer remember) sanction your restricting trade with this other country. Which on TV was abbreviated/blurred and thus within only a couple of years the standalone term had acquired the new meaning!

So at least to me your sentence seems clear: I don't feel like the meaning has changed quite as much as you do. But since you interpret it that way: perhaps I am wrong!

It's a shame the google ngram tool only consults text. TV is a rich source of neologisms.

interfixus• 7 years ago

Older then that. I remember discussing the word and its opposed interpretations in my student days back in the seventies. This was in Danish, but same word ('sanktion'), same meanings.

lonelappde3• 7 years ago

Merriam Webster says you are off by a few hundred years: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanction

daxfohl5• 7 years ago

biweekly et al - every other week - twice a week

numlocked• 7 years ago

Semiweekly is twice a week

daxfohl5• 7 years ago

So is biweekly.

theandrewbailey• 7 years ago

Bi- means two, so biweekly is every two weeks. Twice a week would be semiweekly (every half week), right?

daxfohl5• 7 years ago

Semiweekly is explicit. Biweekly is ambiguous.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/on-biweekly-an...

Biweekly and bimonthly can mean the same thing because of the prefix bi-, which here can mean “occurring every two” or “occurring twice in.”

Invictus0• 7 years ago

How about nonplussed? It means to be surprised and confused, and also unperturbed.

hirundo2• 7 years ago

I wish it was socially acceptable to reply with a compiler error when people use these words. Like "Ambiguous token in the current namespace." Maybe that makes me a nerd, on the spectrum, or just pedantic. Or a pedantic nerd on the spectrum.

scelerat• 7 years ago

Difficult to be a nerd without a sinew of pedantry.

alanbernstein2• 7 years ago

I replied "context error" in a chat with a friend once. It didn't go well.

Doxin3• 7 years ago

Somewhat related: I wish human languages would have the concept of a parse error. Often enough someone says something to me that I'll hear with 100% clarity, but still have no clue what they are trying to say, after which it's often time to play the "what" game until they rephrase.

enlyth• 7 years ago

"Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're saying, would you mind elaborating?"

onorton• 7 years ago

"Can you rephrase that?"

slazaro• 7 years ago

"Sorry, I understood the words but not the sentence"

gnode2• 7 years ago

"Doesn't sound like anything to me."

bcbrown• 7 years ago

You might find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence interesting.

DoreenMichele2• 7 years ago

There's nothing more socially damning than expecting actual communication when conversing with people.

carapace• 7 years ago

Reminds me of the old quote, "The great enemy of communication is the illusion of it."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/31/illusion/

TeMPOraL2• 7 years ago

There's another type of language ambiguity in some languages, where the way a word is used makes it unclear what is the object and what is the subject in that sentence. It happens e.g. in Polish sometimes. Can't think of a good example now, but I recall that in my more pedantic days, I used to write stuff like: "subject --verb--> object" or "object <--verb subject" to distinguish between the cases. Unfortunately, it didn't catch on.

jwilk2• 7 years ago

"Dzieci lubią psy" could in principle mean either "Kids like dogs" or "Dogs like kids". In practice there's no ambiguity (at least in this example), because SVO is a much more natural order.

dfxm12• 7 years ago

It would be more socially acceptable if you were specific, like asking the person directly about which word was ambiguous.

I think the takeaway here is that compiler errors could use more specificity and grammar checks too...

hirundo2• 7 years ago

"Ambiguous token `literally` in the `English` namespace."

Now I'm cool!

akavi• 7 years ago

"I'm not sure what you mean by X; did you mean X1 or X2?" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say during a conversion (modulo formality)

Jun82• 7 years ago

While on the topic of insufferable linguistic pedantry: I always cringe when people use that to introduce subordinate clauses instead of who when the subject refers to humans, but don’t say anything because the majority does not seem to be bothered by this. Example: “The coders that use sublime are great.”

P.S. I also like to use the word insufferable, picked it up from Pride and Prejudice, unfortunately doesn’t get the usage it deserves nowadays.

P.P.S Not many people use P.S. in their emails/posts either, would be a good habit to bring back.

ScottBurson9• 7 years ago

From Oxford Dictionaries Online: "It is sometimes argued that, in relative clauses, that should be used for non-human references, while who should be used for human references: a house that overlooks the park but the woman who lives next door. In practice, while it is true to say that who is restricted to human references, the function of that is flexible. It has been used for human and non-human references since at least the 11th century, and is invaluable where both a person and a thing is being referred to, as in a person or thing that is believed to bring bad luck."

(Sorry if I'm being insufferable :-)

tetraca• 7 years ago

You should learn Chinese.

dsjoerg• 7 years ago

There's a classic Amelia Bedelia story about how she's instructed to "dust" a room and sprinkles dust over everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Bedelia

phjesusthatguy3• 7 years ago

Amelia Bedelia should be required reading at some point. She's such a special character!

adg29• 7 years ago

Wonder if NLP and machine learning algos are equipped to disambiguate the intended meaning of an autoantonym, with respect to its context.

samatman• 7 years ago

Fairly sure a simple word2vec would cover the majority of cases.

arsmoriendi• 7 years ago

Slightly related: Homographic homophonic autantoyms http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1104

air73• 7 years ago

Do you mean literally as in • actually; really or • figuratively; virtually ?

gwd8• 7 years ago

That one really needs to go away from the list; I refuse to accept "figuratively" as a valid definition for "literally", and will contradict / argue with / make fun of anyone who does so.

sudhirj• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, it's literally come to mean of opposite of what it actually means.

cbkeller2• 7 years ago

I sympathise, but for better or worse the OED reports that people have been using "literally" to mean "figuratively"* since at least 1769:

  > 1769   F. Brooke *Hist. Emily Montague* IV. ccxvii. 83 "He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies."
  > 1801   *Spirit of Farmers' Museum* 262   "He is, literally, made up of marechal powder, cravat, and bootees."
  > 1825   J. Denniston *Legends Galloway* 99   "Lady Kirkclaugh, who, literally worn to a shadow, died of a broken heart."
  > 1863   F. A. Kemble *Jrnl. Resid. Georgian Plantation* 105   "For the last four years..I literally coined money."
  > 1876   ‘M. Twain’ *Adventures Tom Sawyer* ii. 20   "And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth."

[*] Or as they, put it, "Used to indicate that some (frequently conventional) metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense"

bloat• 7 years ago

It isn't really used to mean 'figuratively' though is it?

When someone says "I was so cross I literally exploded!" they are not explicitly pointing out that they didn't really explode, they're just using the word for some kind of emphasis.

ScottBurson9• 7 years ago

I like how Ambrose Bierce put it: It is bad enough to exaggerate, but to affirm the truth of the exaggeration is intolerable.

TeMPOraL2• 7 years ago

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/725/.

And another one, for 'gwd downthread: https://xkcd.com/1108/.

dang• 7 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21146964.

tajstar• 7 years ago

Very cool list. I little sad the word "peruse" mean to read over in an attentive or leisurely manner is not on the list it's one of my favorite autoantonyms.

zrm• 7 years ago

A lot of these are just words describing two-subject events. When there is a lease, someone is lending and someone is borrowing. Same for rent, bill, left, etc.

A lot of the others are present vs. past tense. After you put something where you want it, you want it to stay put.

harterrt• 7 years ago

Biweekly? One every two weeks or twice a week.

darkstar999• 7 years ago

No, those two aren't antonyms.

marzell6• 7 years ago

Biweekly means every two weeks. Twice a week is "semiweekly" although people often get this wrong. There's also "semimonthly" for twice a month.

loquor• 7 years ago

Were auto-antonyms meant to have opposing meanings based on the context? Or do they become that way when people assume the meaning incorrectly?

For example, nonplussed originally means to be surprised. But a layman would think that to be 'plussed' must be to be surprised and nonplussed must be the opposite of that. Is this how auto-antonyms come to be?

djsumdog• 7 years ago

It explains it a bit at the bottom of the article with dust (to dust furniture is to clean them, but to dust crops is to put dust on them); but it does seem to be around noun/verb context/usage.

genmon• 7 years ago

My favourites are words that mean the opposite in different Englishes. For example

* to table: postpone (US English) vs put forward for consideration (British English)

* to (take a) punt: give up (US) vs go ahead (British)

What could we call these... Alter-Anglo-Auto-Antonyms?

vumgl• 7 years ago

Also, this used to cause trouble with phone operators connecting phone calls between USA and England: "are you through?" could mean either "are you connected?" or "are you done with the conversation?"

ScottBurson9• 7 years ago

Punt is an interesting one. I think the original meaning was "offer". I've seen it used this way in the British press: The company is punting a new product. This could have been the original meaning in American football: to punt the ball is to offer it to the opponents. But since a team punts when they have given up on making a first down, the meaning of punt shifted to "give up".

spieglt• 7 years ago

"Cheap" is another one that bothered me as a kid. It means both "of low quality considering its price" and "of low price considering its quality."

hanoz2• 7 years ago

And in turn its antonym "dear" is similarly conflicted.

pessimizer2• 7 years ago

"Premium" as an adjective means either expensive or cheap/free.

daxfohl5• 7 years ago

Hysterical: extremely funny or horrified.

tlb• 7 years ago

I like homeophone-antonyms -- words with antonyms that sound similar enough that if you slur a little bit, people won't be sure which you said.

Eg: I find your suggestion risible/reasonable.

jwilk2• 7 years ago

Wiktionary has a longer list:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_contranyms

marzell6• 7 years ago

As an American English speaker, I've only used "overlook" as a verb to mean "miss noticing entirely", but as a noun related to "examine", for instance a "forest overlook" might be a scenic turnout on the side of a road that provides a view where the forest could be "examined".

Similarly we use the word "oversee" for examining/observing... however "oversight" has taken on the role of an Auto-Antonym. We often use "oversight" and "lack of oversight" to mean the same thing, that something was missed due to carelessness... but we also use it to mean "supervision" that should prevent careless omissions from happening.

m12k2• 7 years ago

In the case of such a scenic turnout, wouldn't you then also use "overlook" as a verb, for example in 'the hills that overlook the valley'?

air73• 7 years ago

This happened to me just now: In a two story building, "First Floor" can mean either one.

DoreenMichele2• 7 years ago

In the US, first floor is what Europeans call the ground floor. So I think it depends on where you are.

billfruit2• 7 years ago

I think list is missing a most interesting word of this type, 'nonplussed', which can mean either perturbed or not perturbed.

ScottBurson9• 7 years ago

Never heard it used to mean "not perturbed"; I think it's just a misconstrual. The origin of the word is the French "non plus" meaning "no more": one can't think of anything else to say; one is speechless.

billfruit2• 7 years ago

Now in common usage among Americans it seems to mean "not perturbed".

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/nonplussed

the_af3• 7 years ago

Not exactly an auto-antonym, but similar: in Spanish we have a verb, "alquilar", which means simultaneously "to rent" and "to rent out", and it drives me crazy that it's often unclear from which end of the relation one is speaking:

"Man, the law is so unfair to people who rent!"

"Do you mean unfair to the owner of the property or to the tenant who pays the rent?"

(It doesn't translate perfectly to English, but works in Spanish)

edit: wait, I see "lease" is in the list and it has exactly the same problem! Take that, English language! :D

joemi• 7 years ago

I'm not sure if it's officially correct, but I've heard both "rent to" and "rent from" used colloquially in (American) English.

thaumasiotes7• 7 years ago

I'm sure you're also able to indicate the roles of tenant and landlord in Spanish. But just like in English, you're not required to.

yesbabyyes• 7 years ago

In Swedish, it's also the same word ("hyra") but the meaning is conveyed by adding "ut" ("out"). So the tenant hyr what the landlord hyr ut.

brianpgordon• 7 years ago

Collections of words like this really amuse me for some reason. I have my own collection of animal names which are also verbs:

https://gist.github.com/briangordon/e64d58b6b9abab346014ff05...

kashyapc• 7 years ago

Appreciate this; thanks!

On the misuse of the word "literally", I wholeheartedly agree with the following reader comment from an excellent EconTalk podcast, "John McWhorter on the Evolution of Language and Words on the Move"[1]:

This whole “literally” issue seems to have been mis-framed. The reason many of us object to the use of the word “literally” to mean “figuratively” isn’t that we can’t stand the thought of language evolving; it’s because there’s no replacement for it! I once had a friend say to me, “X is literally Y, and I mean ‘literally’ literally (not figuratively).”

           - - -

From the same[1] podcast, I also learnt about this fun concept called "backshift": when two words join to become a single word (e.g. "breakfast", "blackboard", etc), the accent often shifts to the first word. In McWhorter's words: When something becomes an established concept and it's made up of two or more words, then you, very often have that shift to the back of the word [i.e. the first word].

I'm not all doing justice to the topic. But go check the transcript[1] for "backshift", Mcwhorter gives more context. I'd strongly suggest to listen to it; it clicks much better, as we're talking about word accents.

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/john-mcwhorter-on-the-evolution-of-...

ScottBurson9• 7 years ago

They should add the very similar "cite" and "citation". You can be cited for bravery, or for speeding.

jmah• 7 years ago

Maybe an encompassing description of "cite" is "to publicly recognize"

cmonnow• 7 years ago

literally is literally my favorite

yellowapple• 7 years ago

I don't get the inclusion of "comprise". How are "to contain; include" and "to be composed of; consist of" opposites of one another? Consisting of or being composed of something definitionally means containing or including it, no?

jessaustin4• 7 years ago

Yes, these two definitions are very close to each other. "Comprise" does not belong here.

Others I would remove:

"quantum": It really means something more like "discrete", and discrete values might be small or large depending on one's perspective.

"splice": I find no support for the second definition.

Still, many of these are very nice.

benj111• 7 years ago

Shit

•very good, excellent; "cool".

•of poor quality; "bad".

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/shit

Edit: Credit?

Theres credit in the sense of receiving money, and money in the sense of money going out.

This probably makes more sense to people who have learnt double entry book keeping where credit and debits are reversed compared to popular usage.

dwohnitmok2• 7 years ago

"Shit" is an interesting case and not a straightforward auto-antonym. The meaning of shit hinges entirely on whether it is preceded by "the."

nmstoker• 7 years ago

Might not quite qualify as an auto-antonym, but I am entertained by the new use of "drop" which is increasingly common in ambiguous headlines, perhaps because the dual meaning enhances the clickbait level:

"Apple has dropped feature X" - they're revealed this new feature "Apple has dropped feature X" - they no longer support this feature

rm445• 7 years ago

Headline writers using 'dated' to mean a release date (of say a film or game) has been announced, I can't help reading as judgement that the unreleased item is already passé.

Even further from being an auto-antonym, but positive and negative meanings both related to time.

schoen3• 7 years ago

There are some religious concepts that could be seen as auto-antonyms. The Polynesian words from which we get "taboo" refer to something sacred to the gods, which therefore ordinary people are forbidden to use or interfere with.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tapu https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kapu#Hawaiian

The taboo thing could therefore be seen as very good and important (for gods) or as very bad, improper, or dangerous (for people, outside of the appropriate religious context). I think that many cultures have had a similar dual connotation in words related to sacred things, even if they don't have exactly the same cultural rules.

It's interesting to look at the meanings of Latin "sacer" (the origin of our word "sacred") as an analogy:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacer#Adjective

smilekzs• 7 years ago

temper (1) to soften; mollify (2) to strengthen (e.g. a metal)

Not contradictory because hardness and toughness are 2 distinct (though correlated) properties. Tempering [1] is basically a process that trades some hardness (i.e. soften) for a lot of toughness (i.e. strengthen).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(metallurgy)

spodek• 7 years ago

Academic can mean

- important enough to merit study

- trivial enough to be dismissed

rkuykendall-com• 7 years ago

One I noticed at the grocery is pre-cooked. It means cooked for Turkeys and uncooked for Tortillas.

ccvannorman• 7 years ago

Artifact: Intentional object created by humans Artifact: Unintentional/erroneous feature expressed in the creation of an object

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