Thought for the day:"I hear that there is to be a new TV show this year - Dr Whom - an English Doctoral Scholar travels through time correcting people's grammar"
I thought I woud start the year with a paradox - a grammatical one... Some words that mean oposites at the same time ... here are a few examples I have gathered..
1. Sanction (via French, from Latin
sanctio(n-), from
sancire ‘ratify,’) can mean ‘give official permission or approval for (an action)’ or conversely, ‘impose a penalty on.’
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2. Oversight is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, “oversee” and “overlook.” “Oversee,” from Old English
ofersēon ‘look at from above,’ means ‘supervise’ (medieval Latin for the same thing:
super- ‘over’ +
videre
‘to see.’) “Overlook” usually means the opposite: ‘to fail to see or
observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore.’
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3. Left can mean either remaining or departed. If the
gentlemen have withdrawn to the drawing room for after-dinner cigars,
who’s left? (The gentlemen have left and the ladies are left.)
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4. Dust, along with the next two words, is a noun
turned into a verb meaning either to add or to remove the thing in
question. Only the context will tell you which it is. When you dust are
you applying dust or removing it? It depends whether you’re dusting the
crops or the furniture.
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5. Seed can also go either way. If you seed the lawn you add seeds, but if you seed a tomato you remove them.
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6. Stone is another verb to use with caution. You can
stone some peaches, but please don’t stone your neighbor (even if he
says he likes to get stoned).
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7. Trim as a verb predates the noun, but it can also
mean either adding or taking away. Arising from an Old English word
meaning ‘to make firm or strong; to settle, arrange,’ “trim” came to
mean ‘to prepare, make ready.’ Depending on who or what was being
readied, it could mean either of two contradictory things: ‘to decorate
something with ribbons, laces, or the like to give it a finished
appearance’ or ‘to cut off the outgrowths or irregularities of.’ And the
context doesn’t always make it clear. If you’re trimming the tree are
you using tinsel or a chain saw?
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8. Cleave can be cleaved into two “homographs,” words
with different origins that end up spelled the same. “Cleave,” meaning
‘to cling to or adhere,’ comes from an Old English word that took the
forms cleofian, clifian, or clīfan. “Cleave,” with the contrary meaning
‘to split or sever (something), ‘ as you might do with a cleaver, comes
from a different Old English word, clēofan. The past participle has
taken various forms: “cloven,” which survives in the phrase “cloven
hoof,” “cleft,” as in a “cleft palate” or “cleaved.”
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9. Resign works as a contronym in writing. This time we
have homographs, but not homophones. “Resign,” meaning ‘to quit,’ is
spelled the same as “resign,” meaning ‘to sign up again,’ but it’s
pronounced differently.
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10. Fast can mean "moving rapidly," as in "running
fast," or ‘fixed, unmoving,’ as in "holding fast." If colours are fast
they will not run. The meaning ‘firm, steadfast’ came first. The adverb
took on the sense ‘strongly, vigorously,’ which evolved into ‘quickly,’ a
meaning that spread to the adjective.
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11. Off means ‘deactivated,’ as in "to turn off," but also ‘activated,’ as in "The alarm went off."
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12. Weather can mean ‘to withstand or come safely
through,’ as in “The company weathered the recession,” or it can mean
‘to be worn away’: “The rock was weathered.”
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13. Screen can mean ‘to show’ (a movie) or ‘to hide’ (an unsightly view).
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14. Help means ‘assist,’ unless you can’t help doing something, when it means ‘prevent.’
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15. Clip can mean "to bind together" or "to separate."
You clip sheets of paper to together or separate part of a page by
clipping something out. Clip is a pair of homographs, words with
different origins spelled the same. Old English
clyppan, which
means "to clasp with the arms, embrace, hug," led to our current
meaning, "to hold together with a clasp." The other clip, "to cut or
snip (a part) away," is from Old Norse
klippa, which may come from the sound of a shears.
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16. Continue usually means to persist in doing something, but as a legal term it means stop a proceeding temporarily.
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17. Fight with can be interpreted three ways. “He
fought with his mother-in-law” could mean "They argued," "They served
together in the war," or "He used the old battle-axe as a weapon."
(Thanks to linguistics professor Robert Hertz for this idea.)
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18. Flog, meaning "to punish by caning or whipping,"
shows up in school slang of the 17th century, but now it can have the
contrary meaning, "to promote persistently," as in “flogging a new
book.” Perhaps that meaning arose from the sense ‘to urge (a horse,
etc.) forward by whipping,’ which grew out of the earliest meaning.
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19. Go means "to proceed," but also "give out or fail," i.e., “This car could really go until it started to go.”
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20. Hold up can mean "to support" or "to hinder": “What a friend! When I’m struggling to get on my feet, he’s always there to hold me up.”
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21. Out can mean "visible" or "invisible." For example, “It’s a good thing the full moon was out when the lights went out.”
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22. Out of means "outside" or "inside": “I hardly get out of the house because I work out of my home.”
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23. Bitch, as reader Shawn Ravenfire pointed out, can
derisively refer to a woman who is considered overly aggressive or
domineering, or it can refer to someone passive or submissive.
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24. Peer is a person of equal status (as in a jury of
one’s peers), but some peers are more equal than others, like the
members of the peerage, the British or Irish nobility.
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25. Toss out could be either "to suggest" or "to discard": “I decided to toss out the idea.”
The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names,
including “auto-antonym,” “antagonym,” “enantiodrome,” “self-antonym,”
“antilogy” and “Janus word” (from the Roman god of beginnings and
endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions).
So there you have it....
Today they have brought out new guidelines for drinkers - it is all very depressing
Think I may have to have a glass of Chateau 41 later..
Cheers - Oh and Happy New Year !!
In England during the Middle Ages, raw eel with some ground bitter
almonds was prescribed to cure a hangover, stemming from the belief that
the eels would soak up the remaining alcohol in your system.
Let us know how that scrubbing goes, but if you’re not up for washing
your testicles, you can always do as the Irish did; bury yourself up to
your neck in wet sand. Another ancient Irish water-related recipe for a
hangover is to chuck some oats in ice cold spring water and gulp it
down. Tasty. It’s guaranteed to make you feel right as rain in fifteen
minutes.
“The Russians prepare a special dish when they have a hangover or
feel uncomfortable. They cut cold baked lamb into small pieces, like
cubes, but thinner and broader, mix them with peppers and cucumbers
similarly cut,[2] and pour over them a mixture of equal parts of vinegar
and cucumber juice. They eat this with a spoon and afterwards a drink
tastes good again”
