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I'm looking for the word that describes a word that is both itself and its own opposite, like cleave.
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I really must yell YART on this one, as it has come up at least three (3) times before. do a local search for enantiodromia or enantiodromic. by the way, cleave is not the best example of this as you have two separate words with different derivations which have come to have the same spelling, just another pair of heteronyms.
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Lulu, welcome to the nuthouse. Don't take any notice of the fustian old pooh-bah's griping. You can't be expected to understand everything about the Board on your first foray! I suggest you look at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/maxq/Jo's_Hints.htm to see how the Board works. What tsuwm was whinging about was the fact that this topic has been discussed before, in other threads. Ignore him unless he's talking about language and words, which he does know a thing or two about. Every so often one of the old-timers around here blows his/her stack for no reason other than he or she (a) lives in the central area of the US where it's just finished being winter and you can't see the sea every day, and (b) just got out of bed on the wrong side this morning ... Most of us are friendly and polite to newcomers, aren't we, folks? [c'mon, give us some support here -e]    !
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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yes, captain kiwi, I can see the error of my ways now. I should have called juju by an entirely different name so that they could feel immediately like he/she are one of the family.
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i'm not worried at all that i won't prove my word nerd status in good time. thanks for the help. meanwhile i found this:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/antagonym.html
antagonym and auto-antonym were my favorites to describe the condition.
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. I should have called juju by an entirely different name so that they could feel immediately like he/she are one of the family.
[gratuitous post]I'm sorry, but that was one of the wittiest things i've ever seen here. i can't stop giggling. and that's aside from the clever references to the amn't thread....[/sychophancy]
(btw, why isn't sycophancy a word? i think it should be)
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coco, my favorite word for this is contranym (said Tom contrarily).
b97, who says sycophancy isn't a word??
1. The trade or occupation of an informer; calumnious accusation, tale-bearing. Now only in Gr. Hist.
2. Mean or servile flattery; the character of a mean or servile flatterer.
say, have you ever noticed how many great words there are in the sycophant family?
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b97, who says sycophancy isn't a word?? oh  ... no wonder it didn't atomicize properly; i spelled it incorrectly. in my defense, when it didn't come up, i typed in "sycophant" instead, which of course came up, but without showing 'sycophancy' as a variation. so, i just incorrectly atsuwmed that it wasn't a word. silly me.
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Welcome to you, juju. I am one of the sane ones--trust me.  I can see the error of my ways now. I should have called juju read: B96 by an entirely different name so that they could feel immediately like he/she are one of the family.Um, I think a more appropriate word might be Psychophancy... I imagine juju, whoever he or she are, would agree.
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Welcome to you, juju. I am one of the sane ones--trust me.
Don't do it, juju - Jackie's good people, but she aren't sane by a long way - she can't even pronounce Derby properly! [must-hide-from-the-Louisville-slugger e]
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As you may deduce from the preceeding posts this place is like a pot of coffee "Chock Full Of Nuts!" For non-USers -- that's a real brand of ground, canned coffee. Hang around, and keep posting, juju! For encouragement, just look at anyone's early posts (access by clicking on name and looking in Profile) and you'll discover we have all perpetrated screaming " Yet Another Rehashed Topic and garnered many jibes. Just jump in and have fun!
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It may have come up before, but that's not to say the last word's been said on the subject. Whether one cleaves to cleave as a contranym, or would cleave cleave from the contranymic body, so far as I can see no-one on this Board has addressed Tsuwm's question some threads back, namely, are there any other members of the cleave-class.
Cleave, we agree, is two different words, with different etymologies. To cleave as to adhere apparently descends from the German 'kleben'. To cleave as to split seems to be related to the Greek 'glyphein'. How beautiful, two separate words, from different stocks, evolving independently down through the millenia into morphologically identical yet semantically opposed lexical items. It is only, by the way, in the present tense form that this is completely true. The past of 'cleave' in
the sense of to adhere is 'cleaved' or (archaically) 'clave'. The past of 'cleave' in the sense of to split is 'cleft' or 'clove' or 'cleaved'.
Now let's look at let. In the tennis sense, meaning 'to obstruct', it descends from Middle English. In its opposite sense, it is cognate with the German 'lassen', sharing a Gothic ancestor, letan.
Common contranyms are many, but these are the only two I know of in this special class.
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Welcome aBoard, Rusty! Cool, about let. That must be one
of our idioms that is harder to grasp--I know of a couple of non-native-English-speakers who have used it almost in that Middle English sense, which we don't do (normally).
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Surely Jackie you've seen Sampras come crashing down with one of his 200 mph serves, only to have it catch the tape, pop up, and hear the linesman cry (in Middle English), ' LET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' 
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I know of a couple of non-native-English-speakers who have used it almost in that Middle English sense, which we don't do One of the delights of living in a constitutional monarchy is the survival of archaic forms of language. On the inside of my passport it says: "The Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in and over New Zealand requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty the Queen all whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance." I have loved the phrase "without let or hindrance" ever since I first saw it.
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In reply to:
I have loved the phrase "without let or hindrance" ever since I first saw it
Me 2 MQ. In fact, that's probably what infatuated me with contranymia in the first place.
My latest acquisition is 'wood', as in 'He couldn't see the wood for the trees'.
In passing I note that this particular (wood-)saw is all too apt on this Board, but it's not its appositeness that interests me, but its oppositeness.
Does it mean 'so focussed was he on the tree, he failed to notice its context, the thick thicket', or is it rather that 'so focussed was he on the tree, he failed to notice its essence, the organic matter within'? Or both?
In other words, is 'wood' what a wood's made of, or is a 'wood' what's made of wood? 
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Does it mean 'so focussed was he on the tree, he failed to notice its context, the thick thicket', or is it rather that 'so focussed was he on the tree, he failed to notice its essence, the organic matter within'? Or both?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Around here the saying is : "He can't see the forest for the trees"
Pretty straightforward.
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Around here the saying is : "He can't see the forest for the trees" My guess would be Rusty was indulging in the elegant variation, oh, Ideal Cæsar's Wife
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, Ideal Cæsar's Wife
Please, folks! I am an unremarried widow.
And one of Irish descent who's late husband was also of Irish descent to whom I was ever faithful.
Closest I've come to Italian/Roman is studying the bel canto method of singing which I do love! It seems to add a special, wondeful dimesion when I sing Irish songs.
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Just referring to another thread, wow, in which I praised you and endured the ridicule of others {carrying off my ® and © balls....)
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The Wise Old Woman advises juju never to fear the accusation of YARTism.
This Fool likewise suggests that there are even threads in which there are attempts to exorcise the Bogeyman of YARTism.
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wood
'Wood' in Middle English (pronounced to rhyme with 'road'), and in early Modern English (Spenser used it), also meant "very irate" or "mad; i.e., demented" (often the same thing in the Middle Ages). This is the same thing -- a different word disguised like a more familiar one.
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Yes, Tsk tsk, Tsuwm, ticking off the neophyte about Yarting. You can't expect a stranger to know about that, because he/she/they have to be familiar with our quaint folkways, and if he's strange, how could Jujube?
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ticking off the neophyte about Yarting
There ought to be a law that if you want to complain about a YART to a stranger, first you have to spell out what the word is and then direct him or her to the original thread. Is that reasonable?
Although as proven by this thread, complaining about a YART often leads to other interesting and unexplored word territories.
So whatever.
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In reply to:
Yes, Tsk tsk, Tsuwm, ticking off the neophyte about Yarting.
On the one hand, I appreciate that 'tsk tsk' is the standard orthographic convention for this particular expression of sympathy or (in this case) disapproval.
But on the other hand I don't appreciate it one little bit. It took me years as a kid to figure out that the 'tsk tsk' expression I used to read in Disney comics was not pronounced 'tsk tsk' at all, but was in fact that familiar fricative. How on earth and why on earth did that 'k' get in there, Tskuwm?
The real point of course is that 'tsk tsk', however unsatisfactorily it may be spelt, is, I'm delighted and grateful to note... a contranym! (Assuming that it qualifies as a word in the first place. Hmmm.)
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...not pronounced 'tsk tsk' at all...
Good heavens, I always say it as tisk, tisk. What
"familiar fricative" are you talking about, please?
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You don't have to "say" it-- you could just make a noise, by placing you tongue against your lower teeth, and pulling it back quickly-- It makes a "TSK" type noise-- (Your upper teeth should be stacked on top of your lower teeth-- and you lips slightly parted..) it is sometimes described as a "Clucking noise"-- and done softly, it might be directed at a misbehaving child in church-- along with a glare-- to remind them to behave.. I have always read "TSK as this noise, rather than as a spoken word--
Just as i would consider the ! of the bantu language to be a noise in English-- (Lips parted, teeth parted, tongue curled up on to the roof of you mouth (front of palate) and then snapped to the front of the mouthm and down to make a "Knck" sound--)
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But on the other hand I don't appreciate it one little bit. It took me years as a kid to figure out that the 'tsk tsk' expression I used to read in Disney comics was not pronounced 'tsk tsk' at all, but was in fact that familiar fricative. How on earth and why on earth did that 'k' get in there, Tskuwm?
Huh? How else does one say that? I have always heard it as tsk avec the k.
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a t-like sound made by suction rather than plosion; conventional spelling pronunciation, tisk
American Heritage D.
i.e., to do it do the former, to read it say the latter (also, the k gives you something to do after you swallow the t :)
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a t-like sound made by suction rather than plosion; conventional spelling pronunciation, tisk American Heritage D.D'Oh! Now my Cro-Magnon cerebellum gets it, and I'm entirely with Rusty on this one. If I use "tsk" I say "tsk" Never in a million years would I have tried to spell the sound described above as "tsk" - where is the friggin' k?!
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At least we can pronounce "tsk tsk", fricatively or literally. I went to University with a guy from South Africa who could speak the native language (Xhosa, I think but I'm not sure) which has all the clucks or clicks (x's) in it. He tried to teach me to say just ONE word like that. And I couldn't, for the life of me.
Anyone know anything about the language?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I never could get the hang of the 'clicks' but I had a similar experience. When I was nine, one of my best friends had recently immigrated from South Africa, and she tried to teach me to say the name of the language (Xhosa). I could only do it in two pieces, never quite like she could. For me it was "click" - big pause - "osa".
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I can say !Kung all by itself but if I run into it in the middle of a sentence I have to stop and prep myself. There is another click that is essentially the TSK sound we been talking about that is fairly common in US'ns' English, but it has no phonemic value. It's just a sound some people make while talking.
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