A supplier of poisons.
That’s been my solution to this problem as well.
Interesting that the dinner-as-midday-meal usage is the same in rural Saskatchewan as among old Southerners. I suspect it’s a rural thing.
Used to be, on farms, that the mid-day meal was the big meal of the day. Everyone would get up before dawn, have a hearty breakfast, work until mid-day, have a big meal, relax during the heat of day, and then go back to work when things cooled off a bit, just having a small meal for supper at the end of the day (often leftovers from dinner).
I wonder which is the older connotation for “dinner”? The mid-day meal connotation or the evening meal connotation?
I was always under the impression that the original meaning of “dinner” was the largest meal of the day, no matter when it was taken. In the court of Henry VIII, the king and his court took dinner in the afternoon, but the servants took dinner in the morning, or somethign like that.
Only in North America.
Well now this is interesting. From here:
“Inconceivable!”
You keep using that word. I do not think you know wha–
I mean, it originally mean, that a women could not conceive children.
“Literally” no longer seems to mean what it literally means.
**My ** students know. I like to do little digressions like that when appropriate in the lecture. Since we just covered the rise of Fascist Italy… 
It’s a veritable nightmare.
Fast can mean both “rapidly moving” and “unmovable.”
“Enormity” originally meant “nonstandardness” or “irregularness.” It quickly changed to mean “evilness.” Currently, it’s changing to mean “largeness.”
“Enormous” was similar: its first meaning was “not normal,” but it changed to mean “very large.”
“Dumb” meant “unable to speak”; now it means “stupid.”
“Actor” started as “plaintiff” in a legal case, it later became “someone who performs on stage.”
So that cleaving to one’s spouse is something quite different to cleaving one’s spouse.
In my neighborhood, a pawnshop.
Of course, they’re not quite exact opposites. To sanction someone is to punish them for doing what was already forbidden; to sanction an act is to permit it. Still, they are almost opposite, and it’s an interesting example.
The two words “cleave” are close, but not exactly the same. Cleave meaning to split has an irregular past tense and participle–cleft/cleft *or *cloven. With the other meaning, it’s regular.
I was read some book, (I don’t want to give the title, for fear of sounding pretentious)
In it, The phrase “(someone’s) famous pasteries” is used, and in the footnotes, it explains that famous is used in the sense of supposedly, or according to rumor.
As mentioned above, there are a few words that are their own seeming opposites. If I had seen this thread sooner, I would have been fast to respond. As it was, work held me fast to my desk.
(Well, no, I’ve never been able to work this into a conversation before. Anyhow, some days, I’ve got a pretty fast response. Other day’s, my responses are just half-fast.) (Say that last one more quickly. Bah-dump-bump.)
I bet I can get some people to wince just by saying that this is one of the most unique discussions I’ve seen. …Used to be, unique meant “one of a kind,” with none of this “most” stuff allowed alongside.
Of course, “fast” has already been covered. I really should read the rest of the thread before responding. Half-fast, indeed.