I do not want to call this an oxymoron but why is this word used for two different almost opposite meanings?
Your contract is about to expire. What will you do resign or resign?
I don’t believe re-sign is a legit word. As in signing something again. You can’t just stick re on any word to indicate a repeated action.
resign mean you are voluntarily leaving employment.
That’s a good one. Definitely not an oxymoron but a fun little contradiction in language.
I think the ambiguity comes from the ‘re-’ prefix, which can indicate going backwards, or pressing forwards the second time. Does that make any sense?
I remembered to buckle my seatbelt before driving, but the buckle buckled and didn’t protect me in the end.
The confusion arises because there are two derivative meanings of “re:”
Either one can be used with “sign.” You can sign something a second time or you can withdraw your signature, or metaphorically quit.
Here’s what etymonline.com has to say.
BTW, they’re called contranyms, antagonyms or autoantonyms.
And of course resign is a legit word. :smack:
Well, in cases where the sense might not be obvious from the context, you can always spell the word with the sense to “to sign again” using a hyphen: re-sign.
It’s not the only English word with almost diametrically opposed senses. There’s also cleave, which can mean either to cut apart or to adhere, cling together. But the two senses of cleave actually come from different roots, whereas the two senses of resign both come from the same root; the Latin signare, to mark.
Edit: Ninjaed on a grand scale by Exapno Mapcase.
Cool cool. Thanks for the info.
I always liked table in the context of a bill or proposal. In US English, to table a proposal means to set it aside and discuss it some other time. In British English it means to discuss it immediately. This difference actually caused problems during WW2 planning.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen “re-sign” without the hyphen when meaning “to sign again.” (And, yes, it’s a real word. I’ve heard and seen it often in sports stories about a player re-signing with their team, for instance.)
They may be spelled the same, but I do not regard them as the same word, and pronounce them quite differently. The one meaning to sign again, I would say as re-sine, with a sibilant s, an equal stress on each syllable, and a slight pause between them (in truth, I would be inclined to write it with a hyphen too); the one meaning to abdicate from a position would be reZINE, with a z sound, no pause, and stress on the second syllable. The words are thus homographs, but not homonyms or even homophones. i do not think they are truly contranyms, which, as I understand the notion, refers to cases when the exact same word (not, usually, a pair of homonyms, let alone homographs or homophones) can have (very roughly) opposed meanings when it is used in different contexts. However, no doubt the concept of contranym, which is more a joke category than a serious analytic concept, can readily be broadened to encompass this example if you want.
Unlike the other contranyms, the two resign’s aren’t pronounced the same. In resign (to quit), the S is voiced, whereas it is not in resign (sign again). So it’s only a contranym when written and if you write one of them with a hyphen, it’s not one at all.
ETA: ninja’d by njtt
It’s certainly a confusing coinage.
In English, there’s a tend for compound words to start out as two words, migrate to a hyphenated word, and eventually drop the hyphen. Prefixes (like re-) often follow this pattern. E-mail is currently migrating – you’ll see “e-mail” and “email” used willy-nilly, sometimes by the same person.
In my office, one amusing and confusing issue arises when people correct an e-mail. Outlook uses the term “Resend this message,” so users will sometimes do that, and every once in a while will include in the text, “I resent this.”
Generally I would hyphenate that one. 
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
Sorry. Mandatory Simpsons reference. Carry on.
I don’t think people just how often this happens, and how recent some of the mergings are for common words. It was common practice until well into the 20th century to see to-day and to-morrow, and that lasted even longer in British English than American.
The e prefix seems to be merging at a quicker rate, although the speed seems to vary among various words. Email gets more hits on Google than E-mail, but e-commerce still outpaces ecommerce. Ebook wins over e-book. Ereader is ahead of e-reader.
The flip side of this is seen above. English indiscriminately uses prefixes from different sources with the same spelling but different meaning. Sometimes it’s just not easy to recognize what “re-” means or a variety of others.
Why? Because. There are no rules, no overseeing body. Just usage. And usage will beat you around the head until you surrender. Just ask anybody who still uses to-day and to-morrow.
When did figuratively become an actual meaning of literally?
Never. “Figuratively” has never even been a figurative meaning of “literally”. “Literally” is, however, quite commonly used figuratively to mean something like “very much”, and this confuses and enrages certain pedants.
That article is from 2005, so it’s been trendy to hate for at least a decade. It notes that uses in the OED are found from the 17th century and that nobody seemed to care until the 20th.
And, bringing it all back home, it considers literally a contranym!
“And because of the injuries to my pelvis, I need an operation to be re-membered.”
It’s not just 2 meanings…there are 3!
“Because I failed to resign my contract, I am resigned to the fact that I must resign from my job.”