Examples
English
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
Verbs
- 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
Adjectives
- 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
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]
