7 ms·

Auto-antonym

30 points by lylemckeany 14y ago

gweinberg 14y ago
I would disagree with "cleave" also. "Cleave from" means the opposite of "cleave to", but I would argue that that's because "from" means the opposite of "to", not because "cleave" means the opposite of "cleave".
- nollidge 14y ago
  "Cleave from" isn't a valid construction. A little boy cleaves to his mother's leg, but you wouldn't say he later cleaves from it. Similarly, you can cleave a log with an axe (notice no preposition), but you can't cleave it again with all the nails in the world. (Though you could cleave one piece back to the other.) Notwithstanding the verbs' transitivity, they also have distinct etymologies. From the same Wikipedia article: > For instance cleave "separate" is from Old English clēofan, while cleave "adhere" is from Old English clifian, which was pronounced differently.
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
Another confusing one: inflammable, which means capable of being set on fire but follows the same pattern as other words in which the prefix in- connotes negation, e.g. inflexible.
- fratis 14y ago
  Further confusing the issue: inflammable means exactly the same thing as flammable.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    Ugh, what a country! Such a nice day. I think I'll go out the window!
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Flammable was invented precisely because people assumed "inflammable" meant its opposite. At some point, language consistency becomes less important than random fires being started accidentally.
- baddox 14y ago
  Apparently that dual usage for the "in-" prefix existed in Latin as well. Inflammo means to burn, but insanus means not healthy.
moepstar 14y ago
I'm confused why English is always said to be hard to learn - those concepts mentioned exist in other languages as well.. Even to the opposite, i'm not sure if there's a language where there are _no_ words with 2+ different/opposite meanings?
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  English is a lumpy mishmash of West German, Scandinavian, and Old Norman, leavened with generous helpings of Latin, Greek, and borrowed words from dozens of other languages. That makes for a big basket of grammatical, spelling and pronunciation exceptions held together by vestigial declensions and duct tape. All in all, a delightful language to read and write if you know it, but a tar pit if you're trying to learn it.
  - gruseom 14y ago
    A tar pit if you're trying to master it, but not necessarily so hard to get started with.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    I've heard that English speakers are far more tolerant of sentences that don't follow the rules and can still understand what is said (eg "the mat cat sat upon"). A French friend said that it can be difficult to understand if the speaker merely gets the gender wrong.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      When I played with constructing my own language, one of my concerns was how much poetry and wordplay that a logical semantic consistency prevented. For instance, "I pick... you!" is impossible in a language where the direct object comes earlier in the sentence.
- Colliwinks 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_irregular_verbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_irregular_verbs Is possibly a better indication. Many other languages also has irregular verbs, but I think the number of extra rules and variations that English employs there are a bit more dramatic.
viraptor 14y ago
Auto-antonyms exist in many other languages. Also the examples are mostly very unusual, or so context-dependent that I'd be surprised if anyone actually made a mistake because of them. Most have a different usage based on the meaning - like "to yield [to sb]" / "to yield sth". Actually English is rather easy compared to most languages. No genders for objects, no declination, very minimal and rather consistent conjugation, no cases, etc. I wouldn't say it's confusing to learn (relative to other choices).
- nollidge 14y ago
  I've heard (from non-native speakers) that English grammar's really easy, but it's the pronunciation and conversely spelling that sucks. It's 90% phonetic, but that other 10% is pretty wild.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Ironically, this is because English likes to drag other languages into dark alleys, beat them up, and rifle through their pockets for loose vocabulary. That vocabulary tends to come with a different pronunciation.
triangleman83 14y ago
English having a few words with multiple if opposite meanings doesn't make it hard to learn. It's hard to learn due to the inconsistency in letter sounds, especially vowels, from word to word. Other languages such as Spanish are easy to pronounce because they use the same rules for letter sounds for all words. Title was changed to be a bit less inflammatory now, or is it flammatory? I think they both mean the same thing...
- Aloisius 14y ago
  Does most people who learn English as a second language learn both how to read and speak at the same time? Native English speakers (as with all languages) learn how to speak years before they learn how to read. This makes inconsistencies in letter sounds irrelevant to having good conversational English and leaves learning the inconsistencies later, where you learn common rules that cover most of the language and absorb all the rule breakers while reading.
- lylemckeany 14y ago
  I guess I got a bit cheeky with the title. I'm a marketer, so I can't help it. :-)
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  I recommend reading Bill Bryson's book Mother Tongue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue One thing he notes was that originally there was no spelling consistency because there was no need due to limited written communication. Then as reading and writing became more widespread there became a need for consistency. This took something like 40 years to complete. Unfortunately half way through that period newspapers and dictionaries came out which resulted in some words being consistent and some not.
ZenoArrow 14y ago
...and yet, a child with no prior experience of human language can pick it up without much fuss. So what advantages does a child have over a stereotypical adult learner? I'd say these are the key points: 1. Lack of assumptions. Words often have multiple meanings, don't assume you know all ways a word is applied, instead pay attention to how context alters the meaning(s) you are already aware of. 2. Immersion, a.k.a. throwing yourself in at the deep end. 3. Openness to new information. Could also be highlighted with the word 'playfulness'. Enjoy your progress.
- Someone 14y ago
  It's not only immersion, but also sheer duration. That child takes _years_ fulltime to learn a language. Few adults are willing to make such an investment. Also, there likely is some truth in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis.
- pmr_ 14y ago
  Language learning in children is one of the hardest to explain phenomena in psychology, linguistics and neuroscience. Trying to sum it up in three bullet points doesn't do it justice and is a gross oversimplification.
  - ZenoArrow 14y ago
    What do you find hard to understand about it? We have limited understanding of how our brains work, that I grant you, but if you're looking at the progression we follow in learning a language (i.e. at a more top level view than at the neuroscience level) then the process is much simpler to understand, it's all to do with recognition, association and conversation. Recognition in both the sense of copying sounds we hear and in recognising facets of the world around us. Association in learning to attribute certain sounds to what we experience. Conversation in learning that by making specific sounds and noticing the reaction of others, we show ourselves that the sounds have purpose in the world around us. As our skill with language develops, so too does our self awareness, which is a whole other can of worms, but the skills we take to start off are simple to summarise, in my opinion.
jayferd 14y ago
Perhaps this is why so many people are confused by the multiple uses of "yield" in programming. For example, in a generator context, the metaphor is that the generator yields (produces) an element. In a threading context, a thread yields (concedes) to other threads.
- syncopatience 14y ago
  Thanks for this. I've always been a little perplexed as to why an enumerator in Ruby uses 'yield' when it seemed like it was really the caller that was "yielding" to the enumerator. I ought to have been thinking of an enumerator yielding (as in giving) a value to the block provided by the caller.
- jules 14y ago
  Actually, this is why yield is such an excellent word. If you yield X from a generator, that does two things: 1. Produce the value X from the generator. 2. Yield execution to the calling context. i.e. exactly the two meanings of yield.
- danielweber 14y ago
  It's only because we couldn't find yet another use for "static".
Falling3 14y ago
Definitely interesting... but is anyone else finding some of these to be a stretch? "Fast" wasn't very convincing for me since the latter is part of an idiom. "Moot" I'm just straight up disagreeing with.
- luma 14y ago
  I have no idea where they are getting an additional meaning for "moot". Perhaps they mean the admin of 4chan is worthy of discussion?
  - schoen 14y ago
    I'd still recognize both meanings for the verb "moot": to propose something for discussion (to moot a proposal), or to render further consideration of something unnecessary (to moot a court case). My dictionary says that "moot" as an adjective also has both meetings, but I don't recognize the 'suitable for discussion, under consideration' meaning. Wiktionary says that that meaning is current in the U.K. and "dated" in the U.S.; I'd never heard it before.
  - webmasterm 14y ago
    moot; adjective 1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point. 2. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot I was confused about that too but this clarified it.
- FigmentEngine 14y ago
  Thus is common for most of these. They originally had one meaning, but were then corrupted by people misunderstanding them. For example "moot" originally referred to a meeting of a local (town) council http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/moot-point.html http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/moot-point.html
  - recursive 14y ago
    It's happening to "literally" as we speak.
matt-attack 14y ago
It's missing my favorite auto-antonym phrase "off the menu".
- danielweber 14y ago
  You can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor.
esperluette 14y ago
another nice big list of these at Wordnik: http://www.wordnik.com/lists/contronympho http://www.wordnik.com/lists/contronympho
jonchris 14y ago
another reason why English sucks!
milliams 14y ago
"Citation" can mean "commendation" or a "summons to appear in court."[citation needed] ...Oh the irony

30 points by lylemckeany 14y ago

I would disagree with "cleave" also. "Cleave from" means the opposite of "cleave to", but I would argue that that's because "from" means the opposite of "to", not because "cleave" means the opposite of "cleave".

nollidge 14y ago
"Cleave from" isn't a valid construction. A little boy cleaves to his mother's leg, but you wouldn't say he later cleaves from it. Similarly, you can cleave a log with an axe (notice no preposition), but you can't cleave it again with all the nails in the world. (Though you could cleave one piece back to the other.) Notwithstanding the verbs' transitivity, they also have distinct etymologies. From the same Wikipedia article: > For instance cleave "separate" is from Old English clēofan, while cleave "adhere" is from Old English clifian, which was pronounced differently.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

Another confusing one: inflammable, which means capable of being set on fire but follows the same pattern as other words in which the prefix in- connotes negation, e.g. inflexible.

fratis 14y ago
Further confusing the issue: inflammable means exactly the same thing as flammable.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  Ugh, what a country! Such a nice day. I think I'll go out the window!
- saraid216 14y ago
  Flammable was invented precisely because people assumed "inflammable" meant its opposite. At some point, language consistency becomes less important than random fires being started accidentally.
baddox 14y ago
Apparently that dual usage for the "in-" prefix existed in Latin as well. Inflammo means to burn, but insanus means not healthy.

moepstar 14y ago

I'm confused why English is always said to be hard to learn - those concepts mentioned exist in other languages as well.. Even to the opposite, i'm not sure if there's a language where there are _no_ words with 2+ different/opposite meanings?

RyanMcGreal 14y ago
English is a lumpy mishmash of West German, Scandinavian, and Old Norman, leavened with generous helpings of Latin, Greek, and borrowed words from dozens of other languages. That makes for a big basket of grammatical, spelling and pronunciation exceptions held together by vestigial declensions and duct tape. All in all, a delightful language to read and write if you know it, but a tar pit if you're trying to learn it.
- gruseom 14y ago
  A tar pit if you're trying to master it, but not necessarily so hard to get started with.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  I've heard that English speakers are far more tolerant of sentences that don't follow the rules and can still understand what is said (eg "the mat cat sat upon"). A French friend said that it can be difficult to understand if the speaker merely gets the gender wrong.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    When I played with constructing my own language, one of my concerns was how much poetry and wordplay that a logical semantic consistency prevented. For instance, "I pick... you!" is impossible in a language where the direct object comes earlier in the sentence.
Colliwinks 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_irregular_verbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_irregular_verbs Is possibly a better indication. Many other languages also has irregular verbs, but I think the number of extra rules and variations that English employs there are a bit more dramatic.

viraptor 14y ago

Auto-antonyms exist in many other languages. Also the examples are mostly very unusual, or so context-dependent that I'd be surprised if anyone actually made a mistake because of them. Most have a different usage based on the meaning - like "to yield [to sb]" / "to yield sth". Actually English is rather easy compared to most languages. No genders for objects, no declination, very minimal and rather consistent conjugation, no cases, etc. I wouldn't say it's confusing to learn (relative to other choices).

nollidge 14y ago
I've heard (from non-native speakers) that English grammar's really easy, but it's the pronunciation and conversely spelling that sucks. It's 90% phonetic, but that other 10% is pretty wild.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Ironically, this is because English likes to drag other languages into dark alleys, beat them up, and rifle through their pockets for loose vocabulary. That vocabulary tends to come with a different pronunciation.

triangleman83 14y ago

English having a few words with multiple if opposite meanings doesn't make it hard to learn. It's hard to learn due to the inconsistency in letter sounds, especially vowels, from word to word. Other languages such as Spanish are easy to pronounce because they use the same rules for letter sounds for all words. Title was changed to be a bit less inflammatory now, or is it flammatory? I think they both mean the same thing...

Aloisius 14y ago
Does most people who learn English as a second language learn both how to read and speak at the same time? Native English speakers (as with all languages) learn how to speak years before they learn how to read. This makes inconsistencies in letter sounds irrelevant to having good conversational English and leaves learning the inconsistencies later, where you learn common rules that cover most of the language and absorb all the rule breakers while reading.
lylemckeany 14y ago
I guess I got a bit cheeky with the title. I'm a marketer, so I can't help it. :-)
rogerbinns 14y ago
I recommend reading Bill Bryson's book Mother Tongue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue One thing he notes was that originally there was no spelling consistency because there was no need due to limited written communication. Then as reading and writing became more widespread there became a need for consistency. This took something like 40 years to complete. Unfortunately half way through that period newspapers and dictionaries came out which resulted in some words being consistent and some not.

ZenoArrow 14y ago

...and yet, a child with no prior experience of human language can pick it up without much fuss. So what advantages does a child have over a stereotypical adult learner? I'd say these are the key points: 1. Lack of assumptions. Words often have multiple meanings, don't assume you know all ways a word is applied, instead pay attention to how context alters the meaning(s) you are already aware of. 2. Immersion, a.k.a. throwing yourself in at the deep end. 3. Openness to new information. Could also be highlighted with the word 'playfulness'. Enjoy your progress.

Someone 14y ago
It's not only immersion, but also sheer duration. That child takes _years_ fulltime to learn a language. Few adults are willing to make such an investment. Also, there likely is some truth in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis.
pmr_ 14y ago
Language learning in children is one of the hardest to explain phenomena in psychology, linguistics and neuroscience. Trying to sum it up in three bullet points doesn't do it justice and is a gross oversimplification.
- ZenoArrow 14y ago
  What do you find hard to understand about it? We have limited understanding of how our brains work, that I grant you, but if you're looking at the progression we follow in learning a language (i.e. at a more top level view than at the neuroscience level) then the process is much simpler to understand, it's all to do with recognition, association and conversation. Recognition in both the sense of copying sounds we hear and in recognising facets of the world around us. Association in learning to attribute certain sounds to what we experience. Conversation in learning that by making specific sounds and noticing the reaction of others, we show ourselves that the sounds have purpose in the world around us. As our skill with language develops, so too does our self awareness, which is a whole other can of worms, but the skills we take to start off are simple to summarise, in my opinion.

jayferd 14y ago

Perhaps this is why so many people are confused by the multiple uses of "yield" in programming. For example, in a generator context, the metaphor is that the generator yields (produces) an element. In a threading context, a thread yields (concedes) to other threads.

syncopatience 14y ago
Thanks for this. I've always been a little perplexed as to why an enumerator in Ruby uses 'yield' when it seemed like it was really the caller that was "yielding" to the enumerator. I ought to have been thinking of an enumerator yielding (as in giving) a value to the block provided by the caller.
jules 14y ago
Actually, this is why yield is such an excellent word. If you yield X from a generator, that does two things: 1. Produce the value X from the generator. 2. Yield execution to the calling context. i.e. exactly the two meanings of yield.
danielweber 14y ago
It's only because we couldn't find yet another use for "static".

Falling3 14y ago

Definitely interesting... but is anyone else finding some of these to be a stretch? "Fast" wasn't very convincing for me since the latter is part of an idiom. "Moot" I'm just straight up disagreeing with.

luma 14y ago
I have no idea where they are getting an additional meaning for "moot". Perhaps they mean the admin of 4chan is worthy of discussion?
- schoen 14y ago
  I'd still recognize both meanings for the verb "moot": to propose something for discussion (to moot a proposal), or to render further consideration of something unnecessary (to moot a court case). My dictionary says that "moot" as an adjective also has both meetings, but I don't recognize the 'suitable for discussion, under consideration' meaning. Wiktionary says that that meaning is current in the U.K. and "dated" in the U.S.; I'd never heard it before.
- webmasterm 14y ago
  moot; adjective 1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point. 2. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot I was confused about that too but this clarified it.
FigmentEngine 14y ago
Thus is common for most of these. They originally had one meaning, but were then corrupted by people misunderstanding them. For example "moot" originally referred to a meeting of a local (town) council http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/moot-point.html http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/moot-point.html
- recursive 14y ago
  It's happening to "literally" as we speak.

matt-attack 14y ago

It's missing my favorite auto-antonym phrase "off the menu".

danielweber 14y ago
You can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor.

esperluette 14y ago

another nice big list of these at Wordnik: http://www.wordnik.com/lists/contronympho http://www.wordnik.com/lists/contronympho

jonchris 14y ago

another reason why English sucks!

milliams 14y ago

"Citation" can mean "commendation" or a "summons to appear in court."[citation needed] ...Oh the irony