I’ve long been interested in words that have multiple, contradictory meanings. In English, one of the best known is “sanction,” which can mean either to punish or to approve. “Cleave” means either to split apart or to cling to.
However, I did not realize that there are so many of these words.
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Yeah, “Cleave” is one of my favorites for this reason.
The OP’s link pretty well covers them all. It even has ‘fine’ which I had thought of in the past as an example of this, and hadn’t seen on similar lists before. One I can think of that isn’t on that list: ‘citation’ can either mean an award or some form of positive recognition, or it can be a punishment, like a traffic ticket.
I feel like we just did this thread recently. Or maybe we’ve done it several times. Anyhow, I was going to chime in and say you need to look up “contranym” but you’ve figured that out by now. All the big ones seem to be in that list – perhaps you can add “raise/raze” when spoken.
Yeah, I think so too.
Anyway, as we’re dealing in lists, the wiki page on auto-antonyms has a few not included in the original list.
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Anathema, which usually means something accursed or to be excluded has an older meaning - “A thing devoted or consecrated to divine use.”
I must admit that I was confused, for a while, by the reports about various Russian oligarchs who have been ‘sanctioned’ in the UK.
At first, I thought this was using the definition of the word that means “approve” rather than “penalize”. Why were all these atrocious kleptokrats getting government approval?
Eventually, the penny dropped. Sanction is an auto-antonym.
Cleave is actually two distinct words with entirely different etymologies whose spelling and pronunciation have fallen together. Cleave (clove, cleft/cloven) means to split, while cleave (cleaved, cleaved) means to come together.
“sanction” might simply be a word with one meaning, when properly defined. I think it really just means “singled out for special treatment or consideration”, which could cut either way. Some of these other contranyms perhaps work the same way.
Just for the record, as the English contronyms seem to be well covered already, the German word “Untiefe”, literally translatable as un-depth, means both very deep and very shallow waters. Those words are called Januswörter, like the two faced Roman god. The Spanish contronymity, on the other hand, is called enantiosemia, because Greek seems to sound better than Latin for that.
The Hindi word कल, the Spanish Wiki claims, means both tomorrow and yesterday. Awesome!
‘Fast’ is a borderline case. It can mean either moving rapidly, or fixed immovably in place.
Should we accept “literally” on this list now as it also means figuratively by common usage and IIRC a couple of dictionary’s definitions.
“Fair”, when used to describe a woman’s appearance, can mean either “beautiful” or “average”.
Oversight?
Does “inflammable” count? It doesn’t ever actually mean “not flammable”, but it looks like it should mean that.
This confused me to no end when I was young. I thought that “Untiefe” always meant unimaginable depths, but I often encountered the word in the context of navigating ships near the coast and running aground and was confused until I understood that it also could mean shallow water.
Invaluable? Priceless?
Resign - to quit your job
Resign - to sign a contract (for work) again.
In the US, to table a motion means to set it aside for later discussion.
In the UK, it means to start discussion now.