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Comment by thrwaaayr488 | Hacker News Reader

Great list! My favorite is on it. The verb "sanction" is my "favorite" since the two meanings are both political and totally opposite. If you just read "the United States sanctioned the action" you have literally no idea if it means they expressly allowed it, no problem go right ahead, or if it means they were so mad they did something negative in response, oh, we're punishing you for that. I would say you can't even use the word for that reason.

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Because of oversight, the activity was sanctioned.

I love how that sentence yields 4 possible meanings.

I think the two meanings of "oversight" are not quite interchangeable. One is a mass noun (used without an article): "better oversight is needed"; while the other is a count noun (used with an article): "it was an oversight". So "because of oversight" sounds odd to me; I think it would be "because of an oversight", which would unambiguously indicate the "error" sense.

"The activity was sanctioned because of the oversight" seems to work for me with both meanings of 'oversight'

Ah, very good.

The contradictory meaning of "sanction" is very recent and dates to the 90s (referring to trade restrictions on Iraq). Because it's so new it really annoys me (as opposed to, say, cleave).

When I hear it I still hear as it was used: we (was it the UN? US? I can no longer remember) sanction your restricting trade with this other country. Which on TV was abbreviated/blurred and thus within only a couple of years the standalone term had acquired the new meaning!

So at least to me your sentence seems clear: I don't feel like the meaning has changed quite as much as you do. But since you interpret it that way: perhaps I am wrong!

It's a shame the google ngram tool only consults text. TV is a rich source of neologisms.

Older then that. I remember discussing the word and its opposed interpretations in my student days back in the seventies. This was in Danish, but same word ('sanktion'), same meanings.

I guess the history of this auto-antonym is that in Latin, it refers to a decree or rule—which could potentially be a decree allowing something, or a decree forbidding something.

Merriam Webster says you are off by a few hundred years: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanction

I was excited to look up and see what I had gotten wrong but I don't see it in that entry. It lists the "first uses" as being definition 1 of noun and verb, i.e. precisely my example (UN sanction on restriction of trade).

They do quote (the wonderful) Molly Ivins, who passed away in 2007.

Honestly, usage of the word "sanction" should just be sanctioned.

So you sanction that 'sanction' be sanctioned?

It is.

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