these have come up here several times (AHD4 gives sanction and cleave as examples). A couple of word guys have proposed neologisms to stand for the concept: contranym (Richard Lederer) and antagonym (Charles Ellis).

so, a poll:


-joe (guess which one I like?!) friday

I kinda like autoantonym.

sumpin wrong witch your poll, ron.

yeah, like I couldn't recall how to do a real poll, so I made a fake poll. but that didn't stop someone from expressing his contrary opinion.

not only, but also, I posted in the wrong category -- it shoulda been Misc.

-joe (if only we had a real moderator) friday

ok, then I vote for O.

cutting and pasting woulda saved you some keystrokes

bah, I got keystrokes to spare...

I'm getting tired of pointing out that cleave and cleave are two whole different words. They just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same.

you know this, and I know this; but now even our beloved AHD4 glosses it over.

-joe (tsk) friday

if only we had a real moderator Do you want me to move this to Miscellany?

Don't bother, moderator Jackie - save keystrokes - I can conclude this simple test right now...

The answer you prefer, mister tsuwm, is (x) "enantiodrome".

tsuwm! You magnificent wordbastion, I read your book!

If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck...
cleave off it's head and make orange sauce.

But not if you go to the individual entries. Interestingly, it takes the cloven word back to PIE but the clinging one only back to OE.

Must be a baby swan.

heh

You're in for it now, Mike.

but the clinging one only back to OE

Not sure why Uncle Cal did that, but maybe he disagrees with Pokorny, who takes OE clifian (or variant cleofian) and German kleben back to PIE *gleibh- 'to be stuck' (see page 364 in IEW).

nobut®, I've already done some PM (two senses) (at least), in that general area.

-joe (no fool I) (mostly) friday

Experiment to see if I can create a poll:

so, a poll:

PHP:
O antagonym
O contranym
O enantiodrome

Well, the experiment seems to have worked, though I haven't voted yet. I guess I must be the only one who has Poll Manager as a Post Option.

M, I set it to run until this time of day on the 15th. Hope that's okay.

Now that is cool Jackie.
I think s'zmj suggestion should go into the poll as well.

yes, I voted for enantiodrome, because I think that's the one that relates to a word changing from one sense into its opposite (or nearly so), as opposed to two unique words, spelled the same, with opposing meanings such as cleave.

-joe (how 'bout you, Faldo?) friday

enantiodrome,
It looks like meaning a stadium for a sport that still has to be invented.

I went with contranym because it looks a little like what it means; see BranShea's observation re enantiodrome. I really like Nunc's autoantonym but I might spell it without the first O.

looks kinda kiwi-like at that.

Yeah, if I'd've coined it, it would've been autantonym , too, but it was merely something I found in an online thesaurus.

Thanks, olly.
I think s'zmj suggestion should go into the poll as well. Well--tsuwm was the one who wanted a poll, plus really I was experimenting. People can post if they like his word best.

I guess I should say that if somebody wants to start a poll, give me a holler; but I reserve the right not to comply if I don't want to.

Yes, it works, Jackie. This opens a total new universum!
You can go polling along from thread to thread.
(after you've found out if you can make two identical threads merge)

I chose contranym, bcause I like the shortest one that makes any sense. But I like Janus words even better and would miss the two faced man.

Still to be invented?. Silly. It's a stadium in which one plays enantiaball. I thought everybody knew that.

Excuse nitpick Sparteye. It's enantiO.
Enantio-ball?
Play or have a ball?

ENANTIO
Has synonym names Lambrusca Nostrano and Lambrusca a Folglia Frastagliata. Reported as grown in the Trentino region of Italy where it is used to make a full-bodied, fruity red wine.

Lambrusca Nostrano and Lambrusca a Folglia Frastagliata

Lambrusco?

I thought everybody knew that.

enantiAball is the women's team.

You're so clever, can I be on the team? Or maybe be your sponsor?
I'm on the point of getting puissant rich.
Meaning I stop being puissant poor.

Maybe this lambrusco is made from the feminine branches of the vine.

Oh, Jackie! Did you already delete the poll table?
I've given a very honest vote. It's fifty-fifty. Should there be a revote?

Well--looks to me like it's got a few more hours before voting closes. Maybe somebody'll break the tie!

It's not spelled out anywhere I can see, but I take it by a Janus word you mean a "two-faced" one that is capable of being used not just equivocally but antonymically, i.e. with exactly opposite meanings? Debatable whether sanction is precisely in this category. Near enough I suppose, but the positive usage means official approval for something and the negative usage means the penalty or trade consequences of the official disapproval of something, rather than the disapproval itself. The negative usage is almost invariably in the plural, also, as in "trade sanctions against Iran."

Does it have to be a noun-noun or verb-verb correlation? Or can it be a verb-noun antonymic usage?

if you look at any of the several lists of contranyms (to choose one term) that can be found online, the concept is very loosely applied; but then "exactly opposite meanings" in one word are probly fairly rare, assuming you can even get agreement on the meaning of 'exactly opposite.'

-joe (two-faced) friday

AHD does list verb definitions in both senses. They do have the 'offical approval' vs. 'issue penalties for' difference that you object to but, as tsuwm pointed out, it's often difficult to get universal agreement on just what qualifies as opposite in definititons of words. It's not like my objections to the inclusion of 'cleave' in the list of janus words.

...because the two meanings have different etymology? And are listed as two separate words in dictionaries instead of two meanings of the same word? Guess it depends whether you're defining a Janus word by lexical meaning alone or real life usage. Is it the form or the accident? Does the form have a life of its own apart from its accident? Or when used in real life is it the same spelling so effectively and to all practical purposes the same word with a different meaning?

This also raises the question of whether words with the same spelling but different pronunciations qualify.

it's just an interesting phenomenon, to me. there's nothing 'official' about any of this, and talking about qualifiers seems counterproductive. I mentioned the lists out there, and we could start a long, and no doubt vituperative thread about whether each word 'qualifies.'

Faldo likes to differentiate between a word which has developed opposite senses and two words that are homonyms (or homophones?) with opposite meanings. this is why I've (re)coined the word enantiodrome, which carries with it the characteristic of something which has become its own opposite over time.

cleave, then, are not an enantiodrome.

an interesting(?) exercise for the student might be to find an other such pair.

-joe (strange attractors) friday