Inside the font cover of my current UK passport is the following (bolding mine) … *Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary *
Taken from Wikipedia:
some pairs of contronyms are true homographs, i.e., distinct words with different etymology which happen to have the same form. For instance cleave “separate” is from Old English clēofan, while cleave “adhere” is from Old English clifian, which was pronounced differently.
Great thread. Not huge, yet, but great. Background sound you hear: Finnegans Wake clearing its throat: coincidentia oppositorum/coincidence of contraries, an idea of Bruno Nolan, iscelebrated throughout the book. His ideas in general are fooled around with, not the least as another rationale for his neologisms of double-back words, a few of which I’ll dig up because they’re wonderful and one of the gajillion “keys” to the book. (The antecedent “words” in that sentence yields a plural and singular. Sorry for the infelicity.)
“Double back?” That sounds like “revolutionary,” as we are informed up thread (I’ll get the cite in a later post). By that logic, these should be called, rather, “back words” (nice homonym/self definition there!). But “retronyms” is taken. “Antagonyms” is too specific of an agon of meanings–even though it is perfectly correct; we’re all having fun at a boxing match. But it sounds, I don’t know, mean, prickly, and not as much fun as we’re having.
Joyce expounded and expanded Bruno’s coincidence-of-contraries not only by investing it structurally in Wake’s largest and smallest structure and characterizations, but, following the idea logically to the limit of what how it can be communicated, invested the communication mode itself–the English language–with the principle.
Agon? Sure, whatever. It all works–not “works out in the end” because there isn’t an end–plurabile love makes sure of that.
I truly and really suggest you read about Bruno Nolan (repeat wiki cite)–undisciplined but brilliant (lost out to Galileo for job) scientist and philosopher, who would be a classic SD poster, an attribute I bet never appearing in any of his bios. Galileo, they said, was almost a “martyr,” but Bruno was set on fire.
** I’m Joe Biden, and I approve of the thread, or at least the literal portion. **
“Electrocute” probably counts. Officially, the word means someone was killed by an electric shock. But nowadays it’s frequently used as meaning any kind of electric shock, including a very mild one.
I don’t recall hearing electrocute ever being used for anything other than a lethal electric shock.
16300 ghits for “electrocuted myself”…
The two verbs, cleave, cleft, cloven and cleave, cleaved, cleaved did not result from a change of meaning but from two entirely different verbs with distinct origins coming to be pronounced and spelled the same.
Not only that, the original meaning was specifically applied to the death penalty. It’s a portmanteau word formed from electric + execute. Now, widely used for any application of electric shock, deliberate or accidental. Even inanimate objects can be electrocuted.
It’s pretty common, in my experience. About a month and a half ago, my dog and I nearly got electrocuted ourselves while walking out in the snow. I used the form “nearly got electrocuted” when relaying the story (just to be precise, and because I am aware of the distinction, even though my instinct is just use “electrocute” for the event), but whenever the incident was relayed back to be, it was in the form “I heard you got electrocuted a week/sometime ago. What happened?”
“In general” means “mostly, but with exceptions” or “without exception” depending on the context.
“In general, men are taller than women,” means that men are mostly taller, but not in an absolute way–any specific pairing might go either way.
“In general, a+b equals b+a” means that the statement is true regardless of the values of a and b, and possibly independent of the number system we’re working with. It’s true for all cases.
I’m not sure which usage came first…
Whoever transformed the original “inflammable” no doubt thought that it was an invaluable contribution to language.
As a side note, fuel tanker trucks in eastern Canada will often display both words. As endearing as it might be to think that this is because Canadians are so literate that even fuel tanker markings exhibit dictionary-like precision, it’s actually a practice that originates in the province of Quebec and is simply bilingualism. Had the English not been bastardized, the single word “inflammable” would have sufficed as it’s the same word in both English and French, and had history left well enough alone, Quebec sign painters could have had an extra day off now and then.
I agree. For lesser shocks, I’d use “shock.”
And then there’s the usually positive word “yeah”:
“Yeah, yeah” . . . in the sense of “yeah, right” . . . in the sense of “no way” . . . in the sense of “not at all.”
I’d interpret “yeah, right” and “yeah, yeah” as having significantly different meanings.
“yeah, right” = the thing you have just said is self-evidently absurd, I don’t believe you, and I despise you for saying it.
“yeah, yeah” = the thing you just said is obvious, there was no need to say it, you are annoying me by saying it, please stop speaking now.
Did anyone note “bitch” and “bitch” yet? It can mean either bossy and dominant, or meek and submissive. “He can’t come out with us; his wife’s a total bitch. And he’s too much of a bitch to stand up to her.”