words with contradictory meanings

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

you'll have to excuse me the last famine we had was quite a severe one and recovery has been quite slow

it means she's very intelligent relative to a shared baseline assumption

i.e. "it was quite warm yesterday" can refer to weather that's barely above a chill, but you weren't expecting it to be that warm so in fact, relative to what you imagined it was QUITE warm

"she's _quite_ intelligent, but not really mensa material"

i.e. she's very intelligent, but not really mensa material ...

relative to a shared baseline assumption

eh that's not bad that, i like that.

but xp there's usually shades of qualification to using 'quite' too- it's middle ground stuff, you're not enthusing with 'quite'

xp i.e. she's somewhat intelligent but not really mensa material imo

she's surprisingly intelligent, not shockingly so, but i'm more interested in her friend tbh

^ all in the emhpasis

OK, I'd read the first 2 of Tracer's "never means somewhat" examples as "somewhat". "Quite a (noun)" doesn't seem to mean "somewhat", it's true. But with suitable emphasis "it was quite warm yesterday, but I was expecting it to get hotter than it did" is just as reasonable as "it was quite warm yesterday, I was surprised how warm it got" to my ears.

(tl;dr time)

OED says "As an intensifier: completely, fully, entirely; to the utmost extent or degree" and attests this usage before an adjective from c1480; usage modifying verb to signify thorough completion of action is even older. Then "as an emphasizer: actually, really, truly, positively; definitely; very much, considerably" is attested from 1624.

"As a moderating adverb: to a certain or significant extent or degree; moderately, somewhat, rather; relatively, reasonably" is attested in form "quite a(n) (adjective)" from 1808, and directly before an adjective or adverb from 1886. So, much more recent.

It notes "This sense is often difficult to distinguish from sense A. II., out of which it developed", so it's not just me and bham thinking it's ambiguous, A.II being the "as an emphasizer" section. Further, it says "rare in N. Amer. usage", which sort of answers my question upthread, and may suggest why Tracer may think it's less common?

Bham OTM

basically what you're saying is that Americans speak more clearly and correctly - I quite agree

you somewhat agree

quite = rather

= pretty

unpack

Basically what I'm saying is that Americans can make their point without several paragraphs of quotations from a dictionary strewn among bad punctuation and clumsy summarising, that's quite true

(PS I missed the bit "With many adjectives and adverbs (esp. gradable ones), quite is ambiguous between this sense and sense A. I.; in the latter sense it now tends to collocate with particular kinds of adjective and adverb (esp. non-gradable ones)", and now I think about it this "gradability" is key - "perfect" is not gradable; "true" or "agree" are arguable cases so need a more specific flag of only partial agreement; "good" is gradable, so UK-side "quite good" generally means "eh, it was OK")

UK-side "quite good" generally means "eh, it was OK"

this is madness

Think Tracer's point about prior expectations is a doozy, tho I'm not sure it doesn't actually strengthen the case for the 'nays' tbh

xp yeah 'quite good' all but begs to be finished with a sulky 'i suppose'

quite good vs rather good

You're all quite right.

(the) shit

man-flu

what does that even mean

man-flu is the flu that only men get.

if you're male then it's an extra bad case of the flu, worse than normal flu.
if you're female then it means a cold with exaggerated symptoms.

???