Auto-Antonyms

[dsjoerg]

There's a classic Amelia Bedelia story about how she's instructed to "dust" a room and sprinkles dust over everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Bedelia

[nmstoker]

Might not quite qualify as an auto-antonym, but I am entertained by the new use of "drop" which is increasingly common in ambiguous headlines, perhaps because the dual meaning enhances the clickbait level:

"Apple has dropped feature X" - they're revealed this new feature "Apple has dropped feature X" - they no longer support this feature

[chrisweekly]

Cool site / fun list. But -- and I realize this is pedantic, though if ever there were a time/place for it, it's commentary on a grammar site -- I feel "resign" doesn't quite belong on it. Resign (to sign again) is pronounced with a soft "ess", while (to quit) uses a "z" sound; they're different words w/ different pronunciations that happen to share the same spelling. Doesn't that make them homographs? Is there a special term for this case, perhaps homographic antonym, or anto-homograph?

[smudgymcscmudge]

Resign doesn’t really belong on this list. It isn’t an antonym of itself. Resign and resign are homographs with opposite(ish) meanings.

[jefftk]

The list is ones with the same spelling. If we went with same pronunciation we could add raise/raze.

[empath75]

A lot of people would spell the first one re-sign.

[rdiddly]

While we're at it, literally doesn't belong on it. Literally has exactly one meaning. Unsurprisingly, the wrong meaning is the opposite of the right one.

Still think this list would help every struggling learner of English.

[lonelappde]

Pronunciation isn't part of writing, though. As you note, oral language and written language are not isomorphic.

[coldpie]

With all the political discussion about Britain recently, the table/table antonym described in this list has come up among my friends lately. In Britain, you "table" a motion to put it up for consideration. In the US, if a motion is "tabled" it is put off until later. Very closely related but directly opposite meanings makes for some confusing discussions, where you need to know the nationality of the writer to have any chance of understanding the statement.

[J-dawg]

A couple of others that baffle this British English speaker:

- "I could care less" meaning "I couldn't care less"

- "Entrée" meaning a main dish rather than a starter

[BjoernKW]

“moot” is another one.

In British English it means “disputable” while in American English it means “hypothetical”.

[marzell]

As an American English speaker, I've only used "overlook" as a verb to mean "miss noticing entirely", but as a noun related to "examine", for instance a "forest overlook" might be a scenic turnout on the side of a road that provides a view where the forest could be "examined".

Similarly we use the word "oversee" for examining/observing... however "oversight" has taken on the role of an Auto-Antonym. We often use "oversight" and "lack of oversight" to mean the same thing, that something was missed due to carelessness... but we also use it to mean "supervision" that should prevent careless omissions from happening.

[m12k]

In the case of such a scenic turnout, wouldn't you then also use "overlook" as a verb, for example in 'the hills that overlook the valley'?

[Grue3]

"Terrific" used to be a synonym for "terrible", and "awesome" for "awful". Even the word "bad" has a slang meaning of "good".

In Japanese 適当 is supposed to mean "appropriate, proper", but in practice it almost always means "unserious, sloppy, careless". Not sure how that came about.

[m12k]

Now I wonder if there's a general term for words that ought to be antonyms but are actually synonyms. An example would be flammable and inflammable.

[raldi]

I used to work on a San Francisco team with a Zurich counterpart, mostly staffed with people of Italian descent. There was a quite confusing situation once involving a misunderstanding of my use of "terrific"; they thought I was calling something horrifyingly bad. Another such situation went something like this:

Me: "I tried what you suggested and now everything's hunky-dory."

Them, 12 hours later: "Well if you're going to complain about my suggestion, I wish you'd have at least explained what was wrong with it.

[cardiffspaceman]

A passage in the "Vogue book of manners" from the '30's insisted that one never, ever say that a woman's dress was terrific, with literally no explanation.

[smudgymcscmudge]

Terrific is my favorite autoantonym, but at this point the “terror causing” definition is little more than entomology trivia.

[Lxr]

Similar to 厉害 in Chinese - it often translates as terrible, but mostly used to mean great.

[limomium]

That's just terrorific!

[spieglt]

"Cheap" is another one that bothered me as a kid. It means both "of low quality considering its price" and "of low price considering its quality."

[kashyapc]

Appreciate this; thanks!

On the misuse of the word "literally", I wholeheartedly agree with the following reader comment from an excellent EconTalk podcast, "John McWhorter on the Evolution of Language and Words on the Move"[1]:

This whole “literally” issue seems to have been mis-framed. The reason many of us object to the use of the word “literally” to mean “figuratively” isn’t that we can’t stand the thought of language evolving; it’s because there’s no replacement for it! I once had a friend say to me, “X is literally Y, and I mean ‘literally’ literally (not figuratively).”

           - - -

From the same[1] podcast, I also learnt about this fun concept called "backshift": when two words join to become a single word (e.g. "breakfast", "blackboard", etc), the accent often shifts to the first word. In McWhorter's words: When something becomes an established concept and it's made up of two or more words, then you, very often have that shift to the back of the word [i.e. the first word].

I'm not all doing justice to the topic. But go check the transcript[1] for "backshift", Mcwhorter gives more context. I'd strongly suggest to listen to it; it clicks much better, as we're talking about word accents.

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/john-mcwhorter-on-the-evolution-of-...

[genmon]

My favourites are words that mean the opposite in different Englishes. For example

* to table: postpone (US English) vs put forward for consideration (British English)

* to (take a) punt: give up (US) vs go ahead (British)

What could we call these... Alter-Anglo-Auto-Antonyms?

[vumgl]

Also, this used to cause trouble with phone operators connecting phone calls between USA and England: "are you through?" could mean either "are you connected?" or "are you done with the conversation?"

[ScottBurson]

Punt is an interesting one. I think the original meaning was "offer". I've seen it used this way in the British press: The company is punting a new product. This could have been the original meaning in American football: to punt the ball is to offer it to the opponents. But since a team punts when they have given up on making a first down, the meaning of punt shifted to "give up".

[the_af]

Not exactly an auto-antonym, but similar: in Spanish we have a verb, "alquilar", which means simultaneously "to rent" and "to rent out", and it drives me crazy that it's often unclear from which end of the relation one is speaking:

"Man, the law is so unfair to people who rent!"

"Do you mean unfair to the owner of the property or to the tenant who pays the rent?"

(It doesn't translate perfectly to English, but works in Spanish)

edit: wait, I see "lease" is in the list and it has exactly the same problem! Take that, English language! :D

[joemi]

I'm not sure if it's officially correct, but I've heard both "rent to" and "rent from" used colloquially in (American) English.

[brianpgordon]

Collections of words like this really amuse me for some reason. I have my own collection of animal names which are also verbs:

https://gist.github.com/briangordon/e64d58b6b9abab346014ff05...

[pure-awesome]

I'm surprised "original" didn't make the list.

For example, consider "An original telling of the story" vs "The original telling of the story".

[kace91]

I'm not sure that qualifies as auto antonyms.

Original means the origin/birth in both examples, the difference lies not in the meaning of original but in the word it affects (The telling, or the story itself)

[hirundo]

I wish it was socially acceptable to reply with a compiler error when people use these words. Like "Ambiguous token in the current namespace." Maybe that makes me a nerd, on the spectrum, or just pedantic. Or a pedantic nerd on the spectrum.

[Doxin]

Somewhat related: I wish human languages would have the concept of a parse error. Often enough someone says something to me that I'll hear with 100% clarity, but still have no clue what they are trying to say, after which it's often time to play the "what" game until they rephrase.

[Jun8]

While on the topic of insufferable linguistic pedantry: I always cringe when people use that to introduce subordinate clauses instead of who when the subject refers to humans, but don’t say anything because the majority does not seem to be bothered by this. Example: “The coders that use sublime are great.”

P.S. I also like to use the word insufferable, picked it up from Pride and Prejudice, unfortunately doesn’t get the usage it deserves nowadays.

P.P.S Not many people use P.S. in their emails/posts either, would be a good habit to bring back.

[DoreenMichele]

There's nothing more socially damning than expecting actual communication when conversing with people.

[TeMPOraL]

There's another type of language ambiguity in some languages, where the way a word is used makes it unclear what is the object and what is the subject in that sentence. It happens e.g. in Polish sometimes. Can't think of a good example now, but I recall that in my more pedantic days, I used to write stuff like: "subject --verb--> object" or "object <--verb subject" to distinguish between the cases. Unfortunately, it didn't catch on.

[dfxm12]

It would be more socially acceptable if you were specific, like asking the person directly about which word was ambiguous.

I think the takeaway here is that compiler errors could use more specificity and grammar checks too...

[akavi]

"I'm not sure what you mean by X; did you mean X1 or X2?" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say during a conversion (modulo formality)

[alanbernstein]

I replied "context error" in a chat with a friend once. It didn't go well.

[tetraca]

You should learn Chinese.

[scelerat]

Difficult to be a nerd without a sinew of pedantry.

[meuk]

Suggestion:

    leave (verb)
    1. To go away
    2. To keep in place

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

covered already by "left", its past-tense form

[schoen]

There are some religious concepts that could be seen as auto-antonyms. The Polynesian words from which we get "taboo" refer to something sacred to the gods, which therefore ordinary people are forbidden to use or interfere with.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tapu https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kapu#Hawaiian

The taboo thing could therefore be seen as very good and important (for gods) or as very bad, improper, or dangerous (for people, outside of the appropriate religious context). I think that many cultures have had a similar dual connotation in words related to sacred things, even if they don't have exactly the same cultural rules.

It's interesting to look at the meanings of Latin "sacer" (the origin of our word "sacred") as an analogy:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacer#Adjective

[AndrewOMartin]

"quite" can be used to mean "entirely". "He was quite dead", "It was quite the worst thing I ever saw".

It also means "partially". "It was quite nice", etc.

I think this comes from people using the phrase "It was quite good" in cases when they weren't hugely impressed.

[oceliker]

I read somewhere that American and British usage of “quite” is different — Americans use it to mean “entirely”, while British use it to mean “fairly”.

[yellowapple]

I don't get the inclusion of "comprise". How are "to contain; include" and "to be composed of; consist of" opposites of one another? Consisting of or being composed of something definitionally means containing or including it, no?

[stOneskull]

my favourite type of word. although i refuse to accept the new definition of literally to mean figuratively. i want it taken back.

[thechao]

The word “literally” is an intensifier; do you have the same objection to the use of ‘really’, or ‘actually’? ‘Literally’ was first used to mean “from the text” in the late 17th c. By the early 19th c. it was already fully co-opted as an intensifier.

[arsmoriendi]

Slightly related: Homographic homophonic autantoyms http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1104

[tajstar]

Very cool list. I little sad the word "peruse" mean to read over in an attentive or leisurely manner is not on the list it's one of my favorite autoantonyms.