words with contradictory meanings

^ 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.

'couldn't care less'

^ always annoys me

"couldn't care less" makes perfect sense to me, "could care less" = wtf - but ilx has done that one to death somewhere.

well yeah i was on about the opposite/same meaning on 'could care less' rly

careometer.jpg solves the dilemma

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

― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:32 AM (6 minutes ago)

eh, I respectfully disagree.

I mean, "I almost made the bus" means "I missed the bus, but it was close" — no question about it. but unless you already know whether or not they got on the bus, "I barely missed the bus" could describe one of two totally opposite scenarios. the technical, old-school definition of "barely" may be the only one you or I would ever use, but I know a lot of people who use it as a synonym for "not quite".

("they" being the speaker)

PIE

the only way i can justify could care less in my head is by assuming the person saying it is applying dry and acerbic sarcasm. the only way i can justify couldn't care less is by remembering that it's technically correct. effing hate both because one's nonsense and one sounds rubbish.

xxxp i don't think you're going to find anyone to support your definition of barely, that sounds completely bewildering to me.

at least in the direction of positive > negative

i just learned a good example yesterday: "clambake" used to mean a hip shindig, and Tommy Dorsey even had a jazz combo called the "Clambake Seven" -- but by the '50s "clambake" came to mean a difficult or unproductive jam session, and the word "clam" persists today among musicians as a term for a wrong note or blunder

Peak means bad in British slang (I had to look that up)

Never heard of it.

In any case, slang words that mean the opposite of their standard meaning, no shortage of those.

well with the slang word peak I think it actually evolved from meaning "intensely amazing" - like a peak experience - and then pivoted to meaning "intensely bad" - like in both cases it means "super intense" but just slipped from good to bad

In any case, slang words that mean the opposite of their standard meaning, no shortage of those.

― Not waving but droning (Tom D.), Tuesday, April 23, 2024 10:24 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

obviously. but it would be more fun if you listed your favorite examples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw1ZhGBDICI

It seems very rare now but "stupid" used to mean amazing in the '90s, I guess it evolved from "stupid fresh"

> Tommy Dorsey even had a jazz combo called the "Clambake Seven"

i think you're missing a more obvious clambake, the elvis waterskiing film

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clambake_(film)

(oh, i put it in url tags to avoid the famous ends-in-a-) bug and it did the exact same thing anyway)

Click-me-do

"peak" in contemp UK slang is closer to bad luck or tough shit, I think: That's peak (for you). certainly the way my kids use it. makes me think of pique.

So “peak” is the equivalent of how very old Americans say “Doesn’t that beat all!”

xpost yeah mine too. but i think it started out as something more intense like whoa fuck, worst moment ever

Cacaphemism is reverse euphemism m, like referring to your spouse as the ol' ball and chain or your car as a jalopy