Things That Split Apart and Merge Back Together Again
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The word "cleave" has 2 opposite meanings - either to stick together or to split up apart. Are there whatsoever other words that practice the same thing?
- THREE English language examples and ane French: "Enjoin" can mean "to encourage," and can also hateful "to prohibit," and so that 1 who has been enjoined to get a hunt saboteur can be enjoined by the courts from doing so. "Sanction" tin bespeak either support and encouragement or disapproval and penalisation. Saddam Hussein could sanction the regular army's manufacture of biological weapons then be sanctioned by the Un for having washed so. "Chuffed," according to the New Shorter Oxford English Lexicon, can indicate "pleased" or "displeased." A French personne is either a person or nobody.
W V Dunlap, Hamden, Connecticut, USA (dunlap@quinnipiac.edu)
- "SEEDED" has iii meanings. It can mean that seeds take been put in, taken out, or left in (every bit in grapes).
Colin Bootle, Aylesbury, Bucks.
- "QUITE" tin can mean "totally" or "partly".
David Francis, Academy of Portsmouth Library, Portsmouth, Hants (david.francis@port.ac.uk)
- WHEN we want people to sing a chorus we ask them to join in a refrain, but when nosotros don't want them to bring together in nosotros enquire them to refrain. Too complicated for me - I think I will only hum.
Ann Stalker, (A.Stalker@ins.gu.edu.au)
- "FAST" can mean speedy, or not moving at all, equally in "stuck fast".
Andrew Viner (andrewv@wilco-telephony.co.great britain) ,
- TO Draw the defunction can be understood as to open or to close them.
Pat Hayward, (pmhayward@infosel.net.mx)
- THE Word "literally" is used to mean quite the opposite of its textbook definition when qualifying hyperbole; "I was literally sweating buckets", or "I literally froze to decease". I'thousand sure at that place are literally millions of other examples your correspondants can come up with.
Elizabeth Ling, Cambridge, (efl22@hermes.cam.ac.uk)
- A VAULT is either straight under the roof or under the floor.
David Vocalizer, Manchester 21 (david@zet.clara.net)
- THIS doesn't really fit the benchmark of opposite meanings but there is that famous story apropos the quondam French president, Charles De Gaulle. An English journalist asked his wife what she was virtually looking forrard to now that her husband was retiring from public life. "A penis," she replied, to the astonished audience. It was only later that people realised she was saying "happiness".
Andy Lynam, (alynam@harlequin.co.united kingdom)
- ALOHA, the Hawaiian word "aloha" ways cheerio and hello. Ane can also take the "spirit of aloha", meaning love, generosity and the like. Aloha!
S Edwards, Marina del Rey, USA (sethina@usa.net)
- "FUSE", in addition to several other meanings, tin mean either "solidify" or "cook".
R. Simmonds, Nordland,WA, USA (simmonds@olympus.net)
- WHEN you "raze" a city you are doing the contrary of "raising" it. It sounds ameliorate than it looks.
Charli Langford, London (charli.barbara@btinternet.com)
- The give-and-take "let" can mean either "prevent" or "allow". Of previous answers, "aloha" is non disarming. The words "howdy" and "adieu" have essentially the same meaning, but are used in different contexts. Similarly, the ancient Greek word "xenos", translated equally "host" or "invitee" according to context, really has the unmarried meaning "fellow member of the grouping to which I practise not vest".
Pelham Barton, Birmingham U.M.
- My linguists professor taught me: "Many languages take examples of how ii negative statements can course a positive. None has whatsoever instance of where ii positives can grade a negative." "Yeah, right," I thought.
Mischa Moselle, Lamma, Hong Kong
- In British parliamentary procedure, to table a motion is to put it on the table for debate or action. In the United Staes, tabling a move takes it off the table to be raised once again at some later engagement or, typically, never again.
William Dunlap, Hamden, Connecticut Usa
- Similar to Mischa Moselle'south respond, I half-recall a story of a linguist giving a lecture to peers where some linguistic hypothesis or other was being asserted. A fellow member of the audience declared "I Beg To Differ", simultaneously battling and disproving the theory. Does anyone know the story and what the disproved theory was?
Luke Heal, Wellington New Zealand
- To "crack," in relation to a smiling- you can "crack a smile," which is to say begin one, or a grinning can crack, which is to say finish i.
Jessica Williams, Pittsburgh, USA
- Here'south 1 with opposite connotations: Ordinarily subpar means beneath average, a negative. Simply in golf it's a adept thing to exist subpar.
William Dunlap, Hamden, Connecticut USA
- A 'stakeholder' used to exist the disinterested third political party who held the stake in a bet and would disburse information technology to the winner. Now concern and political types utilise the same word to refer to the people making the bet; the people who have an interest in the outcome.
Brad Thomas, Dartmouth, Canada
wakelinwairespleet1990.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1365,00.html