Contronym

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"Enantiodrome" redirects here. For the Jungian principle of equilibrium, see Enantiodromia.

A contronym or contranym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word original can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before". This feature is also called enantiosemy,[1][2] enantionymy (enantio- means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic (having more than one meaning).

Nomenclature

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A contronym is alternatively called an autantonym, auto-antonym, antagonym,[3][4] enantiodrome, enantionym, Janus word (after the Roman god Janus, who is usually depicted with two faces),[4] self-antonym, antilogy, or addad (Arabic, singular didd).[5][6]

Linguistic mechanisms

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Denotations and connotations of words can drift or branch over centuries. An apocryphal story relates how Charles II (or sometimes Queen Anne) described St Paul's Cathedral (using contemporaneous English) as "amusing, awful, and artificial", with the meaning (rendered in modern English) of "amazing, awe-inspiring, and artistic."[7]

Examples

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English

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‹ The template below (Wiktionary category) is being considered for merging with Wiktionary category 2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›
For a list of words relating to contronyms in English, see the English contranyms category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  • Original can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before"
  • Cleave can mean "to cling" or "to split apart".[4][8]
  • Clip can mean "attach" or "cut off".[4]
  • Dust can mean "to remove dust" (cleaning a house) or "to add dust" (e.g., to dust a cake with powdered sugar).[4][8] This contradiction features in the children's book Amelia Bedelia.[9]
  • Fast can mean "without moving; fixed in place", (holding fast, also as in "steadfast"), or "moving quickly".[4][8]
  • Obbligato in music traditionally means a passage is "obligatory" but has also been used to mean "optional".[10][11]
  • Overlook can mean "to make an accidental omission or error" or "to engage in close scrutiny or control".[12]
  • Oversight can mean "accidental omission or error" or "close scrutiny or control".[13]
  • Peruse can mean to "consider with attention and in detail" or "look over or through in a casual or cursory manner".[14][15]
  • Ravel can mean "to separate" (e.g., threads in cloth) or "to entangle".[16]
  • Sanction can mean "approve" or "penalize".
  • Table can mean "to discuss a topic at a meeting" (British English) or "to postpone discussion of a topic" (American English). Canadian English uses both meanings of the word.[17]

Other languages

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Verbs

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  • The Romanian verb a închiria, the French verb louer, the Afrikaans verb huur, the Finnish verb vuokrata[18] and the Spanish alquilar[19] and arrendar[20] mean "to rent" (as the lessee does) as well as "to let" (as the lessor does). The English verb rent can also describe either the lessee's or the lessor's role.
  • In Spanish dar (basic meaning "to give"), when applied to lessons or subjects, can mean "to teach", "to take classes" or "to recite", depending on the context.[21] Similarly with the French verb apprendre, which usually means "to learn" but may refer to the action of teaching someone.[22] Dutch leren and Afrikaans leer can mean "to teach" or "to learn".
  • In Greek some verbs that begin with the prefix "από-" (apo-) can have a contranym meaning. A prominent example is the verb "αποφράζω" means "to plug something, to fill a hole", and it usually used as a medical term, based on the original ancient Greek meaning. The more modern Greek meaning is "to unplug something, remove a blockage". Similar verbs are "απογεμίζω", that can both mean "to fill up to a brim" and "to empty completely" and "απομαθαίνω", that can both mean "to learn something very well" and "to forget something I learned". The meaning that negates the main action, is usually a more modern Greek one. The prefix "apo-" sometimes enhances an action and sometimes negates it.[23]

Adverbs

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  • Icelandic: fram eftir can mean "toward the sea" or "away from the sea" depending on dialect.[24]
  • Irish: ar ball can mean "a while ago" or "in a little bit/later on"[25]

Adjectives

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  • The Latin sinister lit. 'left' meant both "auspicious" and "inauspicious", within the respective Roman and Greek traditions of augury.[26] The negative meaning was carried on into French and ultimately English.[27]
  • Latin nimius means "excessive, too much". It maintained this meaning in Spanish nimio, but it was also misinterpreted as "insignificant, without importance".[28][19]
  • In Vietnamese, minh means among other things "bright, clear" (from Sino-Vietnamese 明) and "dead, gloomy" (from 冥). Because of this, the name of the dwarf planet Pluto is not adapted from 冥王星 as in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.[29][30][31]
  • Spanish dichoso meant originally "blissful, fortunate" as in tierra dichosa, "fortunate land". However it developed an ironic and colloquial meaning "bothersome, unlucky", as in ¡Dichosas moscas!, "Damned flies!".[32]

In translation

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Seeming contronyms can arise from translation. In Hawaiian, for example, aloha is translated both as "hello" and as "goodbye", but the essential meaning of the word is "love", whether used as a greeting or farewell. Similarly, 안녕 (annyeong) in Korean can mean both "hello" and "goodbye" but the central meaning is "peace". The Italian greeting ciao is translated as "hello" or "goodbye" depending on the context; the original meaning was "at your service" (literally "(I'm your) slave").[33]

See also

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  • X mark, which can either be synonymous or antonymous with a check mark in various contexts
  • Īhām, ambiguity used as a literary device in Middle Eastern poetry
  • -onym, suffix denoting a class of names
  • Oxymoron, contradiction used as a figure of speech
  • Semantics
  • Skunked term, a term that becomes difficult to use because it is evolving from one meaning to another, or is otherwise controversial

References

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  1. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 11, 77., where "enantiosemy" is mentioned along with "auto-opposite",
  2. ^ Liberman, Anatoly (25 September 2013). "Etymology gleanings for September 2013". Oxford Etymologist. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 25 September 2013. The coexistence of two opposite meanings in a word is called enantiosemy, and the examples are rather numerous.
  3. ^ "contronym". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "Nym Words > Autoantonyms". www.fun-with-words.com. Retrieved 2016-09-22.
  5. ^ "'Addad' : a study of homo-polysemous opposites in Arabic". Retrieved 2 August 2011.
  6. ^ Gall, Nick. "Antagonyms". Retrieved 2 August 2011.
  7. ^ O’Toole, Garson (31 October 2012). "St Paul's Cathedral Is Amusing, Awful, and Artificial". Quote Investigator. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  8. ^ a b c Herman, Judith (15 June 2018). "25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites". mentalfloss.com. Retrieved 2022-09-10.
  9. ^ "Amelia Bedelia". LC Online Catalog. Library of Congress (lccn.loc.gov). Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  10. ^ "Obbligato" in Lectionary of Music, Nicolas Slonimsky. McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-07-058222-X
  11. ^ "Obbligato" in Collins Music Encyclopedia, Westrup & Harrison: Collins, London, 1959
  12. ^ "Definition of OVERLOOK". www.merriam-webster.com. 2023-09-01. Retrieved 2023-09-12.
  13. ^ "Definition of OVERSIGHT". www.merriam-webster.com. 2023-09-07. Retrieved 2023-09-12.
  14. ^ "Definition of PERUSE". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 28 June 2020. to ... EFFECT
  15. ^ "Janus Words". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 28 June 2020. to ... EFFECT
  16. ^ The Canadian Oxford dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. p. 1283. ISBN 9780195418163. entangle...disentangle, unravel
  17. ^ Barber, Katherine, ed. (2004). Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Second ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada. p. 1580. ISBN 9780195418163.
  18. ^ "sanakirja.org". Archived from the original on 2021-11-26.
  19. ^ a b Rubio Hancock, Jaime (28 August 2016). "19 autoantónimos: palabras que significan una cosa y la contraria". Verne (in Spanish). Ediciones El País. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  20. ^ Prieto García-Seco, David (2021-05-28). "Rinconete. Lengua. «Huésped» o significar una cosa y la contraria". cvc.cervantes.es (in Spanish). Centro Virtual Cervantes. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  21. ^ "dar". Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish) (23 ed.). RAE-ASALE. 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2022. 14. tr. Impartir una lección, pronunciar una conferencia o charla. 15. tr. Recibir una clase. Ayer dimos clase de matemáticas. 16. tr. Dicho de un alumno: Recitar la lección.
  22. ^ "apprendre". Le Petit Robert, dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française (in French). Dictionnaires Le Robert – SEJER. 2022. Retrieved 30 March 2023. I. (sens subjectif) Être avisé, informé de (qqch.). II. (sens objectif) 2. Donner la connaissance, le savoir, la pratique de (qqch.).
  23. ^ Sarantakos, Nikos (18 June 2014). "Απόφραξη σημαίνει βούλωμα ή ξεβούλωμα;". Οι λέξεις έχουν τη δική τους ιστορία. Archived from the original on 21 May 2025. Retrieved 21 May 2025.
  24. ^ "Íslensk nútímamálsorðabók" (in Icelandic). Árnastofnun. Retrieved 2024-12-05.
  25. ^ "Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla (Ó Dónaill): ar ball". www.teanglann.ie.
  26. ^ M. Horatius Piscinus. "On Auguries".
  27. ^ "sinister (adj.)". www.etymonline.com.
  28. ^ "nimio, nimia". Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish) (23 ed.). RAE-ASALE. 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  29. ^ Renshaw, Steve; Ihara, Saori (2000). "A Tribute to Houei Nojiri". Archived from the original on December 6, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  30. ^ "Planetary Linguistics". Archived from the original on December 17, 2007. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
  31. ^ Bathrobe. "Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese". cjvlang.com. Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  32. ^ "dichoso". Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish) (23 ed.). RAE-ASALE. 2021. Retrieved 2023-05-07.
  33. ^ Ronnie Ferguson, A linguistic history of Venice, 2007, ISBN 882225645X, p. 284

Further reading

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‹ The template below (Wiktionary category) is being considered for merging with Wiktionary category 2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›
For a list of words relating to contronyms, see the English contranyms category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.