On Contronyms

Language is an odd creature—as quirky as some of the creatures who use it.  Like them, it is a “living,” growing, changing thing with complexities and oddities that can make one laugh or scream.  Take contronyms, for example.  Maybe you’ve heard them called “Janus words,” “autoantonym,” “antilogy,” or “enantiodrome.”  Whatever you call them, they refer to terms with two opposite meanings.  To put it differently, such words can act as their own antonyms!  Fascinating, right? 

Not all contronyms cause confusion; a contronym may be clarified by accompanying prepositions, context, or plain common sense.  For example, an apology of something defends it (an apology of my beliefs); an apology for something more often expresses contrition for it (an apology for my erroneous belief).  Similarly, to tell whether a sanctioned company was penalized or approved, one need only to read on and discover what the sanctions were.  Finally, common sense tells us that one dusts a piano by removing dust and dusts a cake by adding powdered sugar or sprinkles.  

Of course, when the context doesn’t clarify the intended meaning of the words, then they do create some annoying ambiguities... or potentially amusing scenarios.  Amelia Bedelia comes to mind: What might she do with instructions to draw the curtains, trim the ham, and overlook the children playing?  (As I recall, she drew the former with pencil and paper!)

We might well wonder why any sensible group of people would let confusing contronyms form in their language.  In answer, I imagine people don’t realize an inherent ambiguity has arisen in a word until it’s too late to easily correct it.  Such change often creeps into a language without intentional effort, starting separately in one region and spreading to others, where it may conflict with an alternate usage.  Any people made aware of both meanings may not have it in their power—or see the point—in trying to streamline the language and “correct” people’s usage.  (Who’s to decide which version is correct, anyway?  “Correctness” in language is subjective and typically dependent on the majority usage or a publisher’s rules, both of which may change over time.)

Some contronym pairs are true homographs—words with the same form and sound but with different origins.  For instance, Old English clēofan (“to separate”) and clifian (“to adhere”) now share the same spelling and pronunciation in modern English: “cleave.”

Other contronyms are polysemous, meaning they share a common origin but have gained opposite meanings.  These are often nouns used as verbs with different, logically-derived meanings.  Hence, the noun “bolt,” used in “to fix a crossbow bolt in place” and “to be as fast as a loosed crossbow bolt” both became the verb and contronym “to bolt,” which we now use for things that remain fixed and that move quickly.  In some such cases, though, the contronym remains separated by dialect: Brits, for instance, “table” a bill when they want to debate it, and Americans “table” a bill when they want to remove it from debate.

Want to read some more contronyms?  Enjoy these: List of Contronyms

 

Other fun terms: 

Like contronyms, homonyms look and sound the same and have different meanings—but unlike contronyms, these meanings are not opposite.  For instance, the homonym “mouse” can mean a rodent, a quiet person, or a small computer navigating device.  Contronyms, however, are always opposites, such as “dust,” which can mean to remove dust or to add dust.

Metonyms are words that can refer to either their original meaning or something related to it.  E.g. “dish” can refer to a platter or its contents, “Hollywood” to the company or the whole film industry, “hands” to literal hands or hired workers, and “the law” to the written legal code or the police who enforce it.

Oxymorons are phrases with contradictory terms used together, such as “ground pilot” or “living dead” and “dark light.” 

Zeugma and syllepsis have various definitions but generally refer to amusing figures of speech that join parts of a sentence with one word, and one must understood the parts in two different senses (such as the English proverb "Eggs and oaths are soon broken.").  Zeugma may also refer to parallelism or ellipses, as in "Mark hoped for snow, but Mary for rain," where "hoped" is understood in the second clause.  To read more, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma.

On Lisa Bear

Lisa Bear

If teddy bears could talk, I do hope Lisa would like me. My paternal grandparents gave her to me shortly after my birth, and she survived the abuse of my toddler days, during which she was often strung up by the neck and then dragged along behind me or tied to table legs.  I’ve no way of knowing whether I was practicing my knots, feared losing her,… or was a very morbid child.  I prefer to think that I acquired the disturbing habit of strangling my toys from observing something innocuous like dog leashes.  Necks are, after all, the least-slippery location on most stuffed toys (and live pets).

Lisa gained her name from my first grade teacher: Lisa Stark.  Well, all my animals at the time shared that name, but somehow only hers stuck.  At some later point in elementary school, I decided to clothe my bear’s “nakedness” in an old sundress from my baby days—one tied in front and one in back, though I removed the back dress at some point.

The book Sara Crewe and film The Little Princess first planted the idea of dolls displaying sentience when their owners left, but it was Toy Story  that made me begin to fancy my stuffed toys had feelings and might, if I neglected them, rise up and kill me in my sleep.  Years later, I read some Japanese mythology that encouraged this idea—namely, stories of inanimate objects that gained souls, some of which become vengeful spirits after having been abandoned.

As an intelligent Christian woman, I recognize this as nonsense, but as an over-imaginative child at night, this was a very eerie idea I couldn’t quite shake, no more than I could avoid racing and jumping into my bed the second I flipped off the light to keep any creature—monster or rodent—under my bed from reaching my legs.  Not that being in my bed instead of beside it would protect me from a determined critter… But I digress.  At least, of all my stuffed animals, I least feared Lisa and her pink cat companion (whose name I’ve bestowed, forgotten, and re-bestowed more times than I can recall.  She's currently "Marie").

Lisa, Marie, and teddy bear George accompanied me to college, half-forgotten and neglected except for the occasional affectionate pat and playful (or superstitious) address.  Now she graces the top of one of our bookshelves with the “special few” we have in our rental home.  The majority of her fifty-odd kin that I once kept have gradually been sent off to new homes.  Lord willing, though, Lisa will one day descend to my children, or else remain with me into old age and finally pass on to my niece or nephew.

The "special few" (George and Marie are on the left, and Lisa is near the right)

On Blogging

After a month’s “vacation” from posting, I thought I’d start by sharing some thoughts on blogging.

Much to my chagrin, I’m not always in a convenient place when I think of a potential blog post.  Depending on what’s available, I may have to prepare it in my head as I walk, write a note on the back of a receipt while braked before a red light, or record an abbreviated memo on my phone while the friend I’m visiting is occupied in another room.  Most of the time, however, I have or will soon have access to the Google Drive document where I keep my in-progress blog posts.  Only when they are complete do I look for an appropriate image to accompany the words and paste both into Blogger for one more proofreading before I post.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but this document of incomplete posts is currently 86 pages long.  

Yes, clearly, I’m not very good at finishing what I start.  On some occasions, I’ve begun multiple posts within a day, starting another when a new idea comes or when the previous becomes too unwieldy, requiring more research than I intended before I can complete it to my satisfaction.  I work on many of these posts now and then over the course of weeks or even months, hoping to bring one to completion.  Ironically, however, over half of the ones I end up posting come from sudden thoughts that morph into a full post in the space of a few hours.  

Ah, the mysteries of the writing process and the human brain!

On another blog-related note, when I read other blogs and vlogs and notice their collaboration and number of visitors,  I sometimes think “why aren’t I doing that?”  

Oh, yeah—I’m inefficient (okay, lazy) and not terribly witty, not to mention self-conscious and thus quite happy to write for a limited group of people or even just myself.  After all, this whole thing started mostly to develop my discipline as a writer and to confirm to myself that I can finish a writing project (sometimes) despite my slow progress on my book (which progress is currently non-existent).  Clearly, the part of my plan involving improved discipline died a quiet death.  Alas.