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>> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. And to support your stance against that, I offer this: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-
by drewcoo 4y ago
>> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things.
And to support your stance against that, I offer this:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their...
They can take "cleave" from my cold, dead hands!
- phoenixreader 4y agoI was going to mention “sanction”. Happy to learn more words like that!
- riffraff 4y agoOh that misses my favorite, "egregiously" which means both done very well and done exceptionally wrong, the latter used more commonly, the former archaic. But in my language we only use the original positive meaning, so I was deeply confused by English using it for a long time.
- bombcar 4y agoThere’s a number that change over time; awful and terrible for example. Very old hymns talk about how awful and terrible God is, for example.
- yellowapple 4y agoI mean, it's accurate either way, at least in the Old Testament.
- riffraff 4y agoAh yes, this is indeed the subject of a Terry Pratchett bit about elves in "Lords and Ladies" > Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.
- emodendroket 4y agoWhile we're on trivia, the etymology of this word is the Latin for "leaving the flock." The Japanese word 抜群, meaning "exceptional," has this exact same etymology except by way of Chinese rather than Latin.