Phantonym

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A phantonym is a word that appears to mean one thing, but in fact means another.

The term was coined by Jack Rosenthal in his 2009 article for the NY Times. [1] An example of phantonym usage noted in the article was when Barack Obama said, "I just want to make sure that we're having an honest debate and presenting to the American people a fulsome accounting of what is going on in this program," where he meant "full" instead of "fulsome". [2] Phantonyms are usually commonly confused words. Then, in 2006, author Kit Whitfield used it with a meaning closer to the current one; she described it as "The feeling you get when you're searching for the perfect word: that there's a perfect word for this concept that's not in the thesaurus, but you can't quite remember it...and you're forced to go with a slightly wrong word." [3]

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References

  1. Rosenthal, Jack (2009-09-25). "Phantonym". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2016-04-05.
  2. Obama, Barack. Having an Honest Debate.
  3. "phantonym - definition of phantonym, phantonyms, BuzzWord from Macmillan Dictionary." . Retrieved 13 June 2021.