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stranger
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stranger
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This week's theme is Janus words (or one of the other synonyms) starting out with cleave. Can you come up with two other English words that have approximately the same two opposite meanings as cleave?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hi, Clarence, welcome aBoard. I can't think of any other than what Anu put. I'll be really interested to see the next four Words.
tsuwm, this week'll be right up your alley!
These are words, known by many names: autoantonym, contranym, self-antonym, enantiodromic, amphibolous, janus word, and so on.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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This week's theme is Janus words (or one of the other synonyms) starting out with cleave. Can you come up with two other English words that have approximately the same two opposite meanings as cleave? You mean like splice, which can mean to join together or to split? That's a stretch though, since the "split" meaning is tagged "Obs., rare" by the OED.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I fired off an email to wordsmith this AM pointing out that, IMO, cleave(s) should not be put under the same headword (see M-W Collegiate, for example: link and link2).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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He did say they were separate words that had come together in spelling and pronunciation. Also note that the verbs are strong (the split meaning.cleave, clove, cloven) and weak (the stuck together meaning, cleave, cleaved, cleaved).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeahbut, mushing them together under one heading perpetuates the finding that cleave is one word with two opposing meanings.
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stranger
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stranger
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So no takers to my quiz. Similar Janus word number two is CLIP. One may separate things by clipping coupons or using hair or fingernail clippers, or may conjoin things on a clipboard or with paper clips. Hint: the third word has three letters.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Irv did, Clarence. He just started a new thread, is all. But as to your third word (didn't realize you had a list), I'll guess "bad".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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lists you want? check the external links at this wiki article.
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stranger
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stranger
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Bad? Bad can mean "good" in certain cultures, but it certainly doesn't mean both "separate" and "adhere" like cleave and clip do. The mystery three-letter word also means both "separate" and "adhere." Marilyn vos Savant, who writes the "Ask Marilyn" column in the Parade Magazine Sunday newspaper supplement, once had a feature about Janus words—that's where I came across "clip." As to the three-letter word, it was in a crossword puzzle where it was clued in its opposite meaning. Answer next week.
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