add site
services
publishers
database
health videos
toolbar
stats
live show
health store
more stuff
JOIN/LOGIN
| advertise add site services publishers database health videos
| | about toolbar stats live show health store more stuff JOIN/LOGIN |
"Enantiodrome" redirects here. For the Jungian principle of equilibrium, see Enantiodromia. An auto-antonym (sometimes spelled autantonym), or contranym (originally spelled contronym), is a word with a homograph (a word of the same spelling) that is also an antonym (a word with the opposite meaning). Variant names include antagonym, Janus word (after the Roman god), enantiodrome, and self-antonym. It is a word with multiple meanings, one of which is defined as the reverse of one of its other meanings. For example, the word "fast" can mean "moving quickly" as in "running fast," or it can mean "not moving" as in "stuck fast." To buckle can mean "to fasten" when used transitively or "to bend then break" intransitively. "To weather" can mean "to endure" (intransitive) or "to erode" (transitive). However such terms are just how one relates to the meaning of an object enduring or having endured weather, whether it is standing up against said weather unchanged, or being influenced negative by said weather, it is still either way being weathered and the additional valuation of its resultant meaning makes it an auto-anyonym only subjectively; when in actuality the word means simply how an object relates to the influence of weather for better or worse. That is an example of our perception adding meaning to the word where it may not initially imply such a meaning generally that would make it an auto-antonym. "Out" can mean both "shining", as in "The stars are out tonight," or it can mean the opposite, as in "Please turn out the lights." "Weedy" can mean "overgrown" ("The garden is weedy") or stunted ("The boy looks weedy"). "To overlook" can mean "to inspect" or "to fail to notice". "Strike", in baseball terms, can mean "to hit the ball" or "to miss the ball". This phenomenon is also called "enantionymy" or "antilogy." The terms "autantonym" and "contronym" were originally coined by Joseph T. Shipley in 1960 and Jack Herring in 1962, respectively. A related term, pseudo-contronym, was coined by David Morice in 1987.[citation needed] Some pairs of contronyms are true homographs, i.e., distinct words with different etymology which happen to have the same form. For instance cleave "separate" is from Old English clēofen, while cleave "adhere" is from Old English cleofian, which was pronounced differently. This is related to false friends, but false friends do not necessarily contradict. Other contronyms result from polysemy, where a single word acquires different, and ultimately opposite, senses. For instance quite, which meant "clear" or "free" in Middle English, can mean "slightly" (quite nice) or "completely" (quite beautiful). Other examples include sanction — "permit" or "penalize"; bolt (originally from crossbows) — "leave quickly" or "fixed"; fast — "moving rapidly" or "unmoving". Many English examples result from nouns being verbalized into distinct senses "add <noun> to" and "remove <noun> from"; e.g. dust, seed, stone (or pit). Some contronyms result from differences in national varieties of English. For example, to table a bill means "to put it up for debate" in British English, while it means "to remove it from debate" in American English. Often, one sense is more obscure or archaic, increasing the danger of misinterpretation when it does occur; for instance, the King James Bible often uses "let" in the sense of "forbid", a meaning which is now obsolete, except in the legal phrase "without let or hindrance" and in tennis. An apocryphal story relates how an English monarch described St Paul's Cathedral as "awful, artificial and amusing", meaning "awesome, clever and thought-provoking." Auto-antonyms also exist in other languages. For example, in French hôte may mean either "host" or "guest"; the same is true for the Italian cognate ospite. In Hindi कल (kal, IPA: [kʌl]) may mean either "yesterday" or "tomorrow" (disambiguated by the verb in the sentence). Italian ciao and English aloha, (from Hawaiian) both meaning “hello” and “goodbye”. In Korean, the term for highest leader and mortal enemy, "wonsu", exists as an auto-antonym due to a homophone, where two separate words are written distinctly in hanja, but appear as homographs in hangul. In addition various neologisms or other such words that contain simultaneous opposing meanings when in the same context rather than alternate meanings depending on context, such as coopetition. [edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
|
| ↑ top of page ↑ | about thumbshots |
