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Comment by ryan-duve | Hacker News Reader

This was one of my favorite "word of the day" entries, a word every speaker tries to work into their speech, at Toastmasters. The person who introduced it gave the two definitions and then basically said "it's the only word I know that means its opposite" or something to that effect. It got liberal use in every speech, including mine, and I still don't feel comfortable using it correctly.

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Merriam-Webster has its own entry about just that topic: words that are their own antonyms!

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-own-opposites

That was a fascinating article.

> Cleave is often cited as the go-to contronym: it can refer to splitting something apart and to uniting two things

Weird, I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".

"Inflammable" is my go-to example of a word that shouldn't exist in the English language. Causes too much confusion. I always use "flammable" and "nonflammable".

> Weird, I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".

Here's an example I stole from the internet [1] "People in the remote mountain villages still cleave to their old traditions."

I'll leave other examples of cleavage meaning two things coming together to your imagination.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cleave-t...

Yeah, never seen that usage of "cleave". I would have expected that sentence written with a different word: "People in the remote mountain villages still cling to their old traditions."

With regards to "cleavage", I always thought that it was based on the other meaning of the word, the one about splitting things apart: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cleavage

> "Inflammable" is my go-to example of a word that shouldn't exist in the English language.

What about "inflammation" (from the same root), like what happens when you bruise yourself, or injure a joint? Is that OK?

Or you should you get a "flammation" instead?

Edit: Or when interpersonal tensions are high, and a situation becomes inflamed?

Ha, you make some good points and I would be ok with those words. But just because the root word (inflame) and some of its derived words are useful, that doesn't mean that we need to allow all possible prefix and suffix derivations of that root word.

Wow. You really want some arbiter of which words are "allowed" or not? That sounds like some real Ministry of Truth type shit. It seems especially weird on a tech site, when tech jargon has historically been rich with wordplay and word construction.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/introduction.html

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html

That sense of 'cleave' is used in the Boney M song "Rivers of Babylon". The lyrics can be found in several song aggregation sites, such as the King James version of the Christian Bible: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Psalms#Psa...

> I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." - Genesis 2:24

> ‘Inflammable’ means flammable? What a country!

-Dr Nick

That one's fun, because they don't really mean the same. It's just that there usually is no functional difference between the meanings.

"to inflame" is to set something on fire. "to flame" is to be on fire. So something that's inflammable can be set on fire, something that's flammable can burn.

I would have said the same thing as you, but it now occurs to me that something that is already on fire must be flammable but it is hardly inflammable since you couldn't set it on fire again (without first putting it out at least).

You could also argue that some things, like most metal powders, are barely inflammable (very hard to light) but are very flammable (once they do burn they burn really well and are hard to put out)

The way it's used on warning labels, "inflammable" means it can combust without an obvious ignition. "Flammable" needs to be set on fire from an external source.

I think "inflammable" is a fake word.

> The person who introduced it gave the two definitions and then basically said "it's the only word I know that means its opposite"

That guy is a literal pain in my behind.

Egregious is like that, if I remember correctly

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