words with contradictory meanings

Never understood that. I think they should change it to SWIPE!

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

See, I don't think that second definition is actually, you know, a definition of "ambivalent". I've heard people use it that way but I always just thought it was a mistake.

The only definition in Oxford American Dictionary: having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone

I've also never heard these alternative definitions of "barely" and "Greek". "Cleave" was a good one.

xposts OK, Myonga OTM.

"protestant" too, arguably (sort of xpost)

See, I don't think that second definition is actually, you know, a definition of "ambivalent". I've heard people use it that way but I always just thought it was a mistake.

well it's probably a mistake in terms of deviation form original, but in my experience it's usually what's meant by the word.

re: people who have never heard the latter: it was kind of a (apparently hard ot understand and lame) joke. Greek wither means nonsense, or it means the Greek language which is the opposite of nonsense to Greek-literate people. Never mind.

just because I didn't laugh doesn't mean I didn't get it

how about the word cricket bat, cause in one content it's something you use in a sporting competition, but in another context it's a murder weapon

Nothing sporting about murder

It's just not cricket

ebb!

sanction

AWESOME example

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Thursday, July 29, 2010 12:55 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

completely OTM kinda dont need to read anymore after this one

overlook

dust

oversight

underwear

'peruse' as people use it / 'peruse' as it actually signifies

assume

garnish

^ good one

Maybe

(Means essentially the same as "maybe not", amiright? Kind of a half-full/half-empty sort of thing)

gets in on a technicality

Bitch - could either be a very dominant and aggressive woman, or a very submissive one.

wiki has a long list of these here. they're called auto-antonyms.

ha it backs me on ambivalent anyway IN YOUR FACE HI DERE

xp oh my god, that is exactly what I'm looking for. wikipedia is my wife

anabasis
(1) a military advance (2) a difficult and dangerous military retreat[4]

this is just due to xenophon being all contradictory with his title, right.

dollop
"Dollop" can mean "a large amount" or "a small amount" depending on its usage.

... depending on whether it's prefixed with "large " or "small" iow

fish fry
Fish fry can refer either to a meal of fried fish (or a social event primarily serving fried fish), or recently hatched fish. Thus, "fish fry" can refer to either the beginning or ending of life for a fish.

ain't wikipedia cuet

decimate
The literal meaning is to reduce by one-tenth (e.g., a decimated legion). However, in modern English it is popularly used to describe a dramatic reduction in number (a population decimated by disease).

These two meanings are not antonymic. Bad wikipedia.

that page needs decimated.

"Quite" can mean partly or completely. "This book is quite good" vs "This dinner is quite perfect".

would argue that's more on the words it's paired with again though.

quite

would think of it more as 'exactly', 'precisely' kind of thing.

I don't know, I'm happy to accept "quite" as ambiguous, at least. In modern British (and Irish? hi darraghmac) usage the meaning of "less than completely" is so dominant that it's almost always the one intended except when paired with a superlative or something more or less superlative in meaning ("quite the best", "quite perfect" etc), but since that is the newer meaning and has only become dominant over the past century or a bit longer, there's definitely still scope for ambiguity, to me

plus I am failing to think of the exact grammatical circumstances in which it means one or the other, so I don't think it's quite settled yet

am I right in thinking that to Americans it always means "completely", or is it regional? I remember it confusing a friend from Florida.

carbuncle

In modern British (and Irish? hi darraghmac) usage

blowin minds here but we didn't pick up the language from reading the OED over 300 year or anything :p

Ha, sorry, just wrote "British", and then thought that perhaps I should revise that in the light of you being the poster I was replying to. Then I was xposted by your second post on the subject and I confused myself about whether you were or weren't using it the same way. But mainly it was too close to lunchtime for me to make any sense.

Now I've had lunch and I'm still not making any sense so I'm just counting the minutes to hometime.

as a crawling apology for colonial expansion and the subsequent ills thereof, 'i was ungry guv' hardly impresses.

Cheek complaining to an Irishman about being hungry too

well i wasn't gonna go there tbh, i had quite a good lunch myself

'quite'

OK, pairing it with the same word:

"Were you happy with your meal?"
"Quite happy ... the chips were good, but the fish was cold"
"Quite happy, thank you, it was all very good"

I'd say these meanings were quite contradictory.

i wouldn't, tbh. not completely happy.

in fact the contradiction for me is saying quite happy to cold fish!

quite just means very.

oooh- 'very' is a bit of a strong reading imo

i'm with bham here - could be 'very', could be 'somewhat'

it's all in the inflection

"it was quite warm yesterday" never means somewhat warm. "she's quite intelligent" never means she's somewhat intelligent. "it was quite a fuck-up" never means it was somewhat of a fuck-up.

"she's quite intelligent" never means she's somewhat intelligent.

?!?

eh i suppose we've let worse through i'm being harsh on bham my bad etc