I bought a bag of dates at my local co-op. The label said “organic Medjool dates (pitted).” I popped a date in my mouth only to discover–hey! These dates have pits in them!
Then it occurred to me that someone who doesn’t speak English as a native language may have labeled the bag. After all, wouldn’t it be logical to expect that something with a pit inside of it could be described as “pitted”? After all, a plant that’s grown roots is “rooted,” and something that’s had paint applied to it is “painted.”
Once I thought about it for a second, I saw that this situation becomes even more complicated in some cases. For example–if someone says that their furniture was dusted, that means that dust was taken off the furniture. If someone says their crops were dusted, that means that dust was put on the crops. So the word “dusted” means two opposite things in two contexts.
Anyone else think of any other examples, where a single word (like “dusted”) means two opposite things? Or where a word, like “pitted,” means exactly the opposite of what you’d expect?
It’s not quite what you have in mind, but let me say that I have always found it odd that warning labesl may say “flammable” (item will go burn, burn dangerous", yet also use “inflammable” to mean “item may go burn, burn , dangerous”. Wouldn’t it be useful if the latter were the opposite of the former?
Does hobbyist usage count? The word junking, which usually means “throwing something out,” is used by record collectors to mean acquiring platters in junk shops and the like.
Example: Ma Plotzwinkle junked all her Louis Jordan 78s at the Hadassah thrift shop. A few weeks later, Johnny Watchfob junked them all from there.
My issue with the English language has often been words that don’t HAVE meanings, even though they have opposites. They mean one thing and one thing only.
For instance, has anyone you know ever been “whelmed?” No? Well, you’ve been overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Why not whelmed?
Is the opposite of confused fused? Refused? Defused?
Similar to what others have mentioned, “unloosen” means the same thing as “loosen”, I believe.
This one is a grammar thing, not about a particular word, but… Have you ever noticed how sometimes a negation inside a question doesn’t change the meaning of the question per se, but just indicates that a “no” response would be unexpected? Essentially, it’s a single negative making a positive. Isn’t that odd? By which I mean, of course, “Is that odd?”
See what I mean? The answer to one question is the same as the answer to the other, even thought one contains a “not” the other doesn’t.
In the USA, to “table” an item under discussion is to stop discussing the item – to take the matter off the table, so to speak. In Britain, you place the proposal on the table if you “table” it.
According to my dictionary, to quit is to resign, while to sign up again is to re-sign. In common usage, however, the latter term is often written without the hyphen, so the headline COACH WILSON RESIGNS could mean either that he leaves his position or that he inks a renewal of his contract.