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Auto-antonym

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32 pointstomkwok30 comments

Relevant discussion from 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9339540

This discussion reminds me of a joke:

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative.

However," he pointed out, "there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

I heard a version of this joke from a syntactician, but it involved a semanticist giving a conference talk on a paper he'd written. I think it's funnier that way, but that's probably the background of academic subdisciplines sniping at each other and the fear of someone pointing out that your research is just a fraud.

As a recovering language curmudgeon, it literally kills me that "literally" is now an auto-antonym too [1].

[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...

I actually disagree with the dictionary there. In my experience (and admittedly my sample is limited), no one intends "literally" to weaken or to make it clear that their usage is figurative. I think use of "literally" applied to something obviously not literal is just another example of hyperbole.

That doesn't actually disagree with the dictionary text linked in grandparent post [0], though it disagrees with the apparent interpretation of it by the post that linked it.

[0] which provides, as the definition for the non-literal use: "(informal) Used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true" and, says of that use in the usage note: "In recent years, an extended use of literally (and also literal) has become very common, where literally (or literal) is used deliberately in nonliteral contexts, for added effect: ‘they bought the car and literally ran it into the ground’."

On reflection, I agree!

Hyperbole, yes, but the word is often used in a sense that is semantically identical to "figuratively". For example, in my previous comment you could s/literally kills/figuratively kills/ without changing the sentence's meaning. (Although it would change the role of the modifier from emphasis to clarification.)

> Hyperbole, yes, but the word is often used in a sense that is semantically identical to "figuratively".

No, its used as an intensifier when the fact that the usage is figurative is implicit, it is not used in a manner semantically identical to figuratively. (When used in this way it is used figuratively -- to mean "almost as if literally" -- but it is not used to mean "figuratively". That is, without "literally" in the same context, the phrase would already be understood to be figurative, the word "literally" is not communicating the meaning "figuratively", it is communicating something about the already-figurative use of the word modified.)

"literally" is used as an intensifier, as a weaker form of its original meaning. It's not an antonym of itself.

"You know what happened last month without anybody noticing? This is for real. Webster’s dictionary expanded the definition of the word “literally” to include the way it’s commonly misused. So the thing is, we no longer have a word in the English language that means literally. It literally doesn’t have a synonym. So we’re going to have to find a Latin word for it and use it, but see, I don’t know any Latin. So when I say that I am literally going to set fire to this building with you in it before I hand over the keys to it, you don’t know if I’m speaking figuratively or literally.” -- The Newsroom

"Now" seems an odd word choice considering it's been an auto-antonym since at least the days of Mark Twain.

I should say "now officially", then :)

In french there's also the curious case of "pesanteur" (gravity), which is feminine; so "la pesanteur" (the gravity). But the absence of gravity is "apesanteur" (weightlessness), which is also a feminine word; so "l'apesenteur". So we have two slightly different words that actually sound exactly the same with their articles. It's only a few years ago that people decided to change the prefix and use "impesanteur" instead (which is however a bit less accurate - see the difference between "im-possible" (not possible) and "a-gnostic" (without belief)).

Thanks for sharing that! I've been learning French for the past two years and it's really opened my eyes to some things. I am already a native bilingual English/Arabic speaker, and thought Arabic was a very heavily-structured language, but learning French has made me realize that more than anything it is English that isn't. Discovering the French Anglo-Norman influence on the language I speak most often has been a very introspective and eye-opening experience for me.

They are two different words though. The prefix "a" means "without" in many other words too.

Never heard "impesanteur" but I have few friends who are cosmonauts obviously :)

The word "hack" can mean to assemble (e.g., hacking some code), but also to destroy (as in, hacking with an axe).

This is a homonym, not an auto-antonym.

Well, auto-antonyms are homographs with opposite meanings. Homonyms are a subset of homographs.

  English:untie?
  German:untiefe?
  French:jamais?
  Dutch:aftrappen?precies?

In Dutch the word for hostage and hostage-taker is the same (gijzelaar).

I'm not sure, but I think semantics shifted throughout the years. I think it used to be "gegijzelde(hostage)" versus "gijzelaar(hostage taker)" now it's "gijzelaar(hostage)" versus "gijzelnemer(hostage taker" or, to be absolutely unambiguous: "gegijzelde" versus "gijzelnemer".

Gijzelaar was originally just the victim (hostage), but its meaning shifted over the years and now most dictionaries list both meanings as valid. https://onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/advies/gijzelaar-gegijzelde

Just found another one in Dutch: "weerhouden"(to keep versus to hold back), although it only seems to have both meanings in Flanders.

would "civil war" count?

isn't that an oxymoron? (like "fresh frozen" or"military intelligence" )

"light yet filling"

"javascript framework"

"Modern Perl"

That phrase doesn't as a whole have two related but opposite meanings, so it would not count.

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