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AnnaStrophic wrote:
>In the same vein, there are words that seem to be antonyms but are in fact synonyms, such as "flammable" and "inflammable."
This happens because the prefix in- is usually thought of as "not" but also can mean in/into/upon. Here again, there were two root words from Latin: flammare and inflammare.
Other pseudo-antonyms are ravel/unravel, bone/debone and loose/unloose. Ravel is quite interesting in as it can mean disentangle or unravel, or it can mean confuse or entangle -- it's a contronym as well!
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stranger
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stranger
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Cheer up, sholmes: you can still use your favorite "cleave" as a shining example of a contranym.
tsuwm correctly stated that the word is not enantiodromic, not having gone through the procedure. However, it is still a legitimate and worthwhile contranym, antagonym or Janus Word (kudos to my friend Richard Lederer).
Patatty
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Well, this is what's known as a quibble: you won't find the two meanings in one dictionary entry as two senses of the same word -- they really are two distinct words and therefore should hardly qualify as a "word that's its own antonym". But you're right, in as much all the extant lists of antagonyms etc. include cleave. vox populi.
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stranger
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stranger
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A gracious quibble, tsuwm, and as a newbie, I acknowlege my understanding of the distinction (WITH a difference, as we legal types are too fond of saying) to have been increased.
Pari passu.
BTW, Michael, I did access the URL you recommended (atlantic)after posting this message, and your discussion of "peruse" triggers my thoughts of another contranym candidate: scan?
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old hand
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old hand
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I don't know if this is relevant, but the word 'draw', when used in the context of 'drawing the curtains' (or drawing the blinds) seems to me to be used to reverse whatever position they are currently in. So if the curtains have been drawn back, then you use 'draw the curtains' to close them, and vice versa. (At least, this is what my Mummy taught me to do. Don't you dare say that Momma was wrong!)
Another with two uses, though they are not necessarily directly opposed:
discrimination: bigotry, or fine discernment.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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stranger
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OP
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I remembered what sparked my interest in this topic in the first place. A book titled "Dictionary of Common Fallacies" has an entry something like "there are no words that are their own opposite", and an example was 'let', as in Shakespearian terms it means 'prevent', thus Hamlet: "I'll make a ghost of any man who lets me" (go after his father's apparition).
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stranger
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Tergiversator -
Did you catch Buckley's column today on the Miami mess?
Quote: "... so is it true of the majority of the American people, who can live with the consequences of the end of the cold war without fearing, in the case of Elian Gonzalez, that tergiversation is in the saddle, and we are betraying Walt Whitman"
Not every day you see that word in the news.
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