Contranym

 

Recently a list of contranyms was posted online. To sanction, for example, can mean to approve; it also means to boycott, i.e. not approve. France sanctions Germany’s sanctions. Another contranym is ‘apology’, which we usually understand to be a statement of contrition for an action, but it can also mean a defence of an action. When John Henry Newman writes his ’Apologia Pro Vita Sua’, he is not saying sorry for his life, rather he is laying out the case for why his life happily went the way it went, without saying sorry once. Furthermore, the very title of his book sends its own message in unapologetic Latin; some English readers require meaningful translation. A contranym (or contronym) is an auto-antonym. It’s a single word with two contradictory meanings. To dust means to remove fine particles from a surface; it also means to add fine particles to a surface. They are their own opposites. The distinctive meaning is contingent on the context in which the word is used. In the kitchen we cleave the meat for chicken parmigiana, separating with a cleaver, but we want the breadcrumbs and parmesan to cleave, or not separate, from the slice during cooking. A little hour may be spent thinking of contranyms from daily life. One of my favourites is ‘oversight’, a word that once meant not noticing something, or missing something obvious. It now also means having complete notice or control over something, being responsible for knowing all of something, whether obvious or not. To have oversight of an operation can lead to some terrible oversights. Take the captain of the Titanic, who knew too late he was a walking contranym. Nowadays I always have to look twice at which meaning is in play with ‘oversight’. Likewise with ‘presently’, a word that may mean now or then, depending on when it happens. ‘Depending’ is a borderline contranym, it’s very conditionality an assurance or absence of assurance. I meditate on the Australian expression ‘yeah-nah’, whether it is a contranym, a contra-contranym, an ouroboros, or even a known part of speech, at all.  Subcultures make wordplay of contranyms, turning them into grammatical art. ‘Wicked’, for example, means very, very good to many Americans. ‘Wicked’ can mean super cool or hot as. “It’s so bad, it’s good,” is not an ethical proposition with a chance of survival, but for Americans it’s all in the way it’s said, a signature of supreme quality. Likewise, some English folk have the same gift for saying words to mean their opposite. Asked about their outing to the theatre, they will reply that it was absolutely fabulous, and it’s only by their tone or a look that they mean the opposite – it was not absolutely not fabulous not. Dictionaries weren’t devised to register this level of contrary contranym.