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Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

There’s a few other self antonyms just in English. “Cleave” immediately comes to mind

"table" is an antonym depending upon your location. For Americans, in the context of a discussion, the verb "table" means to set it aside and stop discussing it. For Brits, it means to bring up a topic and discuss it.

That only means "to split". I don't think it can mean "to join together" can it? Unless you mean "cleave to" which is rare and not really the same word.

Cleave can definitely mean to adhere to. Its not a word I hear everyday but I wouldnt necessarily call it rare

If I say "I cleaved a log" there is no chance of you thinking I meant "I cleaved to a log".

And if I say I cleaved the halves together, you’d have no chance of thinking that I meant I cut them apart. It’s English, you need context to tell what definition is being used for any word with multiple definitions

> I cleaved the halves together

I would say what are you talking about? That makes no grammatical sense.

It does? One definition of cleave is to join or adhere things together. It’s not a new slang definition, you can look it up in any dictionary.

I did look it up in a dictionary.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cleave#Etymology_2

> (intransitive, rare) Followed by' to or unto: to adhere, cling, or stick fast to something.

Something can cleave to another thing, but you can't cleave two things together. It's grammatically the same as the word "cling". You can cling to something but you can't cling two things together. It doesn't make sense.

Inflammable?

Not an autoantonym; that word only has one meaning.

Its problem is that it appears to mean the opposite of what it means, not that it has two contradictory meanings.

“The mighty sequoia, protected by thick bark and with its foliage typically high above the flames, was once considered nearly inflammable.” — Brian Melley, Anchorage Daily News, 23 July 2022

That’s just misuse of the word.

Sure but by now every rational and reasonable reader must understand that whenever they come across the word "inflammable", the author might have misused it and they need to search for additional signals to identify whether it means "inflammable" or "uninflammable". This is not different than how the rational and reasonable reader treats the use of an autoantonym.

There's a difference between misusing a word, and a word that has two accepted meanings.

Brian Melley needs to be acquainted with the word nonflammable, which is the one he really wanted to use.

There's no need to use a single word; that sentence is trying to sound impressive, not concise.

Try "The mighty sequoia, protected by thick bark and with its foliage typically high above the flames, was once considered nearly impervious to fire."

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