words with contradictory meanings

(xp)

sanction

AWESOME example

ledge - "paper clip"

"Fast" in that sense just means "tightly", which is not in direct contradiction with "fast", meaning "speedy".

xp nah i answered myself up there, it was dock. how does clip = join?

when you clip things together, eg with a paperclip

i used to know loads of these. "cleave" is the classic imo.

dyke

wear

... similar to weather

funny how "old" can mean "young" in some contexts.

If I talk about "the old me", I'm referring to the way I was in the olden days, when I was young.

^ kinda how 'before' works in my head

hmm, I don't q

*hmm, I don't quite follow you, darraghmac

well your future is before you, but you can also look back on something that happened 'before' now

literal

^ nah, there's actually a thread on how this is just misused

ha as there is for 'actually', actually

PRESCRIPTIVIST!

xxxp ah, clever

boned

skim

suck

haha i didn't see boned. i suppose this works in the same way.

skim

― Chaim Poutine (NickB),

losing you here tbh- as in 'to read quickly'?

maybe because skimming the ingredients vs. reading them makes you fat and skimming yr milk makes you thin

^ needed on crossword puzzle thread

cross? hurt irt friendship vs. help irt football

really scraping teh bottom of my headbarrel here

I suppose "doing the laundry" can result in either clean laundry or dirrty laundry, depending on how you interpret the verb.

skim - to take away some of the surface layer OR to add to the surface layer ('skimmed with ice' or a skim of plaster)

piece/peace (as in, carrying a piece vs. world peace)

again, streeeeetch armstronging this

apology

barely - "just enough to get by" versus "not quite enough to get by"

hah, I feel like there are a lot of these in English because it feels like I come across them all the time but when it came time to double down and start the topic I could only think of one

:(

custom?

hmm 'barely' just means for it to be close either way.

thread could get vicious if we all start to nitpick though

draw?

To draw on something (e.g. a cigarette) is to take something from it while to draw on something (e.g. a piece of paper) is to put something on it.

re: the fast discussion above, if "the door is fast" it can have opposite meanings -- if you are talking about a traditional door, eg it probably means it's stuck and something not moving can't BE any slower, whereas if you are talking about a grocery store automatic door it probably means it opens with the rapidity of an automatic door on the uss enterprise.

xxxxxp i don't think barely works because the words after it make it opposite, ie. i barely made the bus vs. i barely missed it. you could explain pretty much any adverb as contradictory by that logic. unless i am missing something?

xxp i should type faster

blow

apology

― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Thursday, 29 July 2010 13:46 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I like this, 'sorry I did something wrong' vs 'fuck you I did nothing wrong'.

how about rent? Seems that both positions in the state of affairs are described as renting.

invaluable is probably with inflammable as one of the 'yes we know but everyone knows what you mean by it'

rent, lease, lend all the same there, yeah

does resign count? you have to pronounce it differently to get the other meaning. like "alex tanguay resigned with the calgary flames" vs. "the ceo resigned amid controversy."

actually the more i think about it, there's also "resigning to your fate" which is accepting the way things are vs. "resigning from your job" which is NOT accepting the way things are and making a big change.

i guess it just means like quit yr job vs. quit yr bitching, so maybe not opposite

hyphen makes the difference?

Don't get "ambivalent" unless you're just counting the mistaken use of "ambivalent" to mean "indifferent".

ambivalent can be to feel v strong but conflicting feelings, or it can mean not to care one way or the other.

iirc

"take care of" -- see nurse vs. hitman

think the hitman would take that one

catholic

nice

(that was a response to Hurting 2)

xxxxxp i don't think barely works because the words after it make it opposite, ie. i barely made the bus vs. i barely missed it. you could explain pretty much any adverb as contradictory by that logic. unless i am missing something?

but y'see, it's totally ambiguous, even in the examples you gave. If someone said to me, "I barely made the bus," I'd have a hard time telling if they meant "I made the bus, but I almost didn't" or "I didn't make the bus, but I almost did" without further context. the words after it don't clarify things much at all.

the problem with "barely" is that the formal, historical definition of it is "just enough", but another informal definition is "not nearly enough" (thefreedictionary.com's entry says just this). unless you know which definition someone is using, it could go either way regardless of which verb (made vs. missed) is being modified.

I 'barely made the bus' = i made the bus, but it was close. there's no other reading i could give it.

I think the word just means something like aiming to gain favour or approval from others in a sycophantic manner. That aim can meet with success or failure - but the meaning of the word doesn’t change ?

yes you're right it's really the verb "to ingratiate" that i'm opposing to the adjective "ingratiating" .. the latter is basically always negative isn't it? like someone is doing it in an annoying way. but you could say "he's ingratiating himself (in?)to the room" - same word, different part of speech - and it wouldn't necessarily have that connotation of being an obvious suck-up, in fact it might mean the opposite

Please patronize my business!

Stop patronizing me!

GARNISH, am I right

you are right and so was elmo argonaut 15 years ago but kudos it really is a canonical example of this sort of thing

I'm not right and the Connections on Aug 2 was bad No way that's purple: the NYT Connections thread
Grr @ elmo for making the Connections seem reasonable

Turgid, when applied to eg (a) a ballad, or (b) a river.

c) penis

advent

in the christian calendar it’s the time of waiting, BEFORE the big day

in secular usage it means the big thing has happened and we are now living in that new reality eg “the advent of steam power”

Please patronize my business!

Stop patronizing me!

A patron can be the owner of a business (esp. a restaurant) or a customer of it.

Hmm. Both "boss" and "benefactor." I guess a restaurant is saying the customer is king?

The negative sense in "don't patronize me" is sort of "don't pretend you're being magnanimous," almost "I don't need your generosity."

Peeled

Unpeeled

I never know whether "pitted" olives have pits or don't.

There are tons of those, pitted skinned boned

"Shell" as well.

boned vs deboned

idg this?
a peeled banana has been peeled. an unpeeled one hasn't.

We have a machine at work with 2 different calibrations for spelt wheat: DEHULLED and UNHULLED. They mean opposite things

xp i think the idea is you could plausibly say, "She unpeeled the banana." and most people would understand this to mean the banana had its peel removed.

Yeah it's adjective vs verb usage i think