Saw the use of the term “sanctioned” in a quoting of our official rules just now in ATMB, in terms of dissuading hijacks, but the first definition that came to mind when I first saw it was “to give effective or authoritative approval or consent to.” I was thus rather confused until I made note of the context and recalled the alternate definition: “the detriment, loss of reward, or coercive intervention annexed to a violation of a law as a means of enforcing the law.” Merriam-Webster website
It then struck me that these two definitions are basically antonymic, and one indeed must rely on context clues to divine which of the two was actually intended.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but I think scale is a double contronym. It can mean a range of values (a musical scale) or a specific value (to be paid scale). It can also be to put on top of something (scale a mountain) or remove from something (scale a fish).
Not really a contronym. It comes from Old English fæst ‘firmly fixed, steadfast’ and fæste ‘firmly’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch vast and German fest ‘firm, solid’ and fast ‘almost’. In Middle English the adverb developed the senses ‘strongly, vigorously’ (compare with run hard), and ‘close, immediate’ (just surviving in the archaic fast by; compare with hard by, both meaning “very near”), hence ‘closely, immediately’ and ‘quickly’; the idea of rapid movement was then reflected in adjectival use (from the Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University Press).
FTR, I looked this up when I became pissed off with John McWhorter citing all sorts of alleged contronyms that really weren’t, in support of bullshit like “I could care less”.
But there are legitimate contronyms, some of which have already been mentioned. When you “bone” a chicken, you’re not building a chicken by supplying it with a new skeleton. It’s just an evolved short form of “de-bone”. In loose parlance, you’re preparing a chicken by dealing with the bones.
In German, there‘s the verb „umfahren“, which can mean both „to drive around something“ (a detour), and „to drive over something“. Which can lead to the sentence: „Den Fußgänger bitte umFAHRen, nicht UMfahren!“ („Please drive around, not over the pedestrian.“)
I took a German class once, and the teacher explained that the German use of “an” isn’t quite the same as the English equivalent “on”. She said that a phrase like “the picture is on the wall” would be confusing in German; that “an” is only used for something that is resting on top of something else. I don’t know what preposition they would use for something that is affixed onto a vertical surface, like a picture hanging on a wall.
I wonder if something similar is at work with “umfahren”. Going around something (over the top or around the side) is equivalent in a certain sense; after all, you’re not going through it. It only becomes an issue when you’re dealing with things like cars and pedestrians.
I would argue that this is again an example of words that are not legitimate contronyms. “Resign” in the sense of quitting a job or giving oneself up to some fate goes back to the 14th century and comes from the Old French resigner, which in turn comes from the original Latin. When a sports athlete signs a contract renewal, he is being “re-signed” which is an entirely different word consisting of the prefix “re” appended to the verb “sign”, and which IMHO definitely needs the hyphen (most dictionaries agree). In most dialects it’s not even pronounced the same.
