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.