Have you ever heard of an auto-antonym? My Uncle Maurice told me about these odd words decades ago. An auto-antonym is a word which has two opposite definitions. The word is its own antonym. Maurice gave me a long list of auto-antonyms, but I lost that list a long time ago. The only word that I remember from Maurice’s list is ‘clip.’ ‘Clip’ can mean to attach or to detach. When you clip documents together, you attach them, but when you clip a coupon, you detach it from the newspaper. There are a lot of other auto-antonyms. Here are a few of them.
‘Inflammable’ literally means ‘capable of burning’, but when most people use the word, they mean ‘incapable of burning’. many people use the word ‘imflammable’, but ‘imflammable’ is not a real word, so its meaning is anyone’s guess. Because of this confusion, most fire departments prefer to use the words ‘flammable’ or ‘combustible’ instead.
‘Oversight’ can mean ‘to examine’ or ‘to fail to examine.’ (The oversight committee was supposed to review the contract, but they didn’t. It was an oversight.)
‘To rent’ can mean ‘to borrow’ or ‘to lend.’ If you say that ‘Julian rents his house’, that could mean that Julian is the landlord or that Julian is the tenant.
‘Shelled’ can mean either ‘with the shell on’ (Eileen ate a soft-shelled crab sandwich) or ‘with the shell off’ (Lauren bought a pint of shelled oysters.)
‘To dust’ can mean either ‘to remove dust’ (Bryna dusted the living room) or ‘to add dust’ (Lilah dusted the chocolate truffles with cocoa powder.)
‘Left’ can mean ‘to leave’ (Adin left the room) or ‘to stay’ (Bob was the last man left.)
‘To fight with’ can mean to fight against (I had to fight with Michael to get him to take out the garbage) or to fight alongside (I promised to fight with Eleanor to get Mayor McCheese reelected.)
‘To seed’ can mean to add seeds (Ben seeded his front lawn) or to remove seeds (Karyn seeded a tomato.)
‘Off’ can mean to activate (Piper set the alarm off) or to deactivate (Howard turned the alarm off.)
‘Citation’ is either an award for good behavior (The fireman received a citation for bravery) or a penalty for bad behavior (The policeman gave the driver a citation for making an illegal turn.)
I think auto-antonyms must be frustrating for foreigners learning to speak English, but there are a lot of frustrating things about the English language. I wonder if they have auto-antonyms in other languages.
