4 ms·
Words That Are Their Own Opposites (2015)
- rolph 7y agoim wondering how an AI would deal with this sort of thing. would contronym strings, be like forbidden ASCII?
- kranner 7y agoIf we take archaic usage into account, there are many more words that now mean the opposite of what they used to mean, e.g. “awesome”.
- injb 7y agoWhen was awesome used to mean bad?
- vbuwivbiu 7y agothey mean that since _everything_ is awesome these days, awesome now means "ordinary"
- kranner 7y agoI didn't meant that at all.
- kranner 7y agoOne of the OED meanings is still "appalling, dreadful, weird". I've seen usage meaning the same as "terrifying" in older texts but I can't find an example just now.
- cbfrench 7y agoDo you mean “awful”?
- kranner 7y agoNo, I meant "awesome" but "awful" is an even better example.
- injb 7y ago"awful" in this context reminds me of this famous story about Charles II (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/31/st-pauls-cathedral/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/31/st-pauls-cathedral/) From the article: "When the excursion was complete the monarch told Wren that the new building was amusing, awful, and artificial. Remarkably, Wren did not feel insulted; instead, he was greatly pleased."
- rfugger 7y agoInflammable?
- _nalply 7y agoThat's a dangerous one. The builder asks, is this insulation inflammable?
- calebm 7y agoI ran into "The payment was remitted" at work, and I wasn't sure initially if they said they were denying to reimburse me, or if it the payment had been sent out.
- murkle 7y agoReciprocal
- injb 7y agoWeirdly, the verb "to doubt" used to be used in the opposite sense to how it is now. So, for instance, if you say "I doubt it's going to rain", that means you think it won't rain. But a few hundred years ago, it would have meant you think it is going to rain. (And of course if you lived in England, you'd probably have been right.)
- edzillion 7y agoIf you've read Gibbon's The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire you will have wondered at the meaning of both sensible and insensible which both seem to alternate between opposites randomly throughout the book.
- mrcactu5 7y agothese are called "Janus words" or self-antonyms. Such as "flammable" and "inflammable". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
- velcrovan 7y agoBuckle — to collapse, or to fasten Raze/Raise might be a “phonetic contranym”