Words that are their own opposites

There are some antonyms that are called auto-antonyms - words that have two opposite meanings. For example, to "clip" may mean to cut a little piece off, or to put a little piece on. To "look over" may mean careful scrutiny or that you missed an important detail. Sometimes the antonymy may be historical: "nice" used to denote an unpleasant quality. There is a discussion of whether any generalities could be made about such pairs. Are they regularly motivated, or always a coincidence? Meanwhile, here are more auto-antonyms that got left out of last post: One auto-antonym is "moot", which at once means "suitable for debate" and "not worth discussing".

Impregnable: able to impregnated or inable to be pregnated, cope(s)mate: used to mean antagonist and now means partner or comrade, It turns out that they were having a week celebrating "fence-setters", evidently another term for what is calling auto-antonyms. BRUCE NEVIN reminds us of an intercontinental auto-antonym pair: "public school" in Britain is "private school" in the USA and vice versa.

Infer: historically (and now, informally) this means "imply" as well. Rent, lease: several pointed out to me that these means both lend and borrow. In addition, Chinese operates similarly with respect to this pair, and WOLFGANG LIPP notes a similar auto-antonymy to represent "give" and "take" in pronunciation but not in writing.

Learn/teach: in "sub" - Standard English, these two meanings fuse into “learn”, as they do in standard Russian “uchit'” Here is “sensitive”: this may describe either someone with profound understanding for the feelings of others, and tolerates differences of opinion (thus "sensitivity training" for group leaders) as well as a paranoid who doesn't listen to what people are really saying, and decides to take everything as a personal insult.

Hole/whole: Spelled the first way, an entire absence of matter; the second, entire presence. This reminds me of "pit" which can be either a hollow or the stone of a fruit. Which reminds me of "seeded" oranges (insert your favourite fruit here) - oranges with seeds (as opposed to navel oranges, which have no seeds), OR oranges that have had their seeds removed. If you think you're beginning to see some patterns here, you're not alone! There were received a few theories on the ultimate essence of auto-antonymy, historical, psychological, and sociological approaches. These theories show that auto-antonymy comes about for a variety of reasons.

“I've been enjoying the discussion of words that are their own antonyms.

At first I thought the classic example of Latin Altus "high" or "deep"

might fit in, but as I thought about it I figured it was just unmarked

for point of view (say when cleaning out an empty swimming pool then

"Deep" becomes "high") so I just looked to see if it was on the list and

 got a comment. No. Good. But one that I have long wondered about is

"risk" as in "he risked winning the game". I was shocked (as a teenager)

 the first time I saw "he risked losing the game" (or something like that)

 in print, because I previously thought (and am still inclined toward)

 the complement of risk being the desirable result, not the undesirable

 one. Whether or not this fits into this discussion, I wonder if anyone

 else has had a similar (or opposite) reaction or any thoughts

about what's going on in the case of "risk"[2]”.

 

HOW TO TEACH ANTONYMS

Teaching antonyms requires great skill and practice. For this purpose the teacher uses various techniques and methods.

For example, while teaching antonyms “small” and “big” he uses pictures for presenting them. He says: In these pictures you see two balls. (The balls should differ only in size.) This is a small ball, and this is a big ball. This ball is small, and that ball is big. Now, Sasha, come up to the picture and point to the small ball (big ball).

Then the teacher shows another picture with two houses in it – a white house and a yellow house, and he asks another pupil to point to the white house, to the u yellow house, and so on.

The teacher may use gestures, for example, for conveying the meaning of stand up, sit down. He says: Lena, stand up. He shows with his hands what she must do. Lena stands up. Now, sit down. Again with the movement of his hands he shows the girl what she must do. The other pupils listen to the teacher and watch what Lena is doing. Then many pupils are invited to perform the actions.

If the antonyms are difficult for understanding the teacher may use the learners’ mother tongue and translate them directly or to give the analogies. For example, the teacher says: антоним слова “широкий” на русском языке будет “узкий”, а по-английски это слово звучит как “narrow ”.