words with contradictory meanings

typcially to put something in an 'off' state - turn off, switch off - is to disable it or stop it. in some cases - set off, kick off - it can mean to enable or start. ok strictly speaking it's the phrase as a whole which has the meaning, nevertheless i find it curious and amusing that 'off' can be used in this way.

i think "off" in that second group is working more as "free" or "release" or "unleash". i agree that it's doing something different to turning off a switch

let's set off the fire extinguisher! no, turn it off, turn it off!

Fuck off

Not really just seemed like the thing to say

to ask someone to fuck off is not necessarily the same as wishing them to be fucked off

fuck away

no, it's not quite the same

fuck off the pain

The phrase “if not” in constructions like “it was a piece of showmanship worthy of Gaz Coombes, if not Hitler” is used to mean two basically contradictory things (“although not Hitler” vs “and even Hitler”)

Is that a reference to the Suella Braverman resignation letter?

i don't think this is a contradiction exactly, it's more like the establishment of a continuum without locating a specific place on the continuum

viz it's contradctory to say "i was in london and also i was in glasgow" but it's not contradictory to say "i was on the london-glasgow train" -- “it was a piece of showmanship worthy of Gaz Coombes, if not Hitler” is a way of saying "i was on the coombes-hitler train": you're indicating an evolution and a direction but not a distance

in a sense are we not all on the coombes-hitler train ?

I'll be in the Quiet coach.

i agree with the wins offering of if not as used

OK how about this:

the alarm's going off
vs
the television's going off (till you've done your homework)

the yoghurts going off

Hmm. I guess that to go off might mean lots of activity (go off on a tangent) or no activity (go off line) or unexpected activity (go off script) or unpleasant activity (go off on someone).

But these are set phrases, not sure that's the same thing as a word that might function as its own antonym.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go+off+queen

Or go off your meds, which means to not take them, or go off message, which means to lose discipline. Go off queen is more like "lose control but in a good way."

as far as I'm concerned phrases are words and I think at least some linguists would back me up on this

these days when kids say bad they mean good

Lexemes, speech acts, sure (xp)

Egregious

Also, lol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonce

as far as I'm concerned phrases are words and I think at least some linguists would back me up on this

Depends on what kind of phrase you are talking about. Phrasal verbs are pretty wordlike but they still have syntactic qualities most English words do not. Idiomatic phrases are even less wordlike (there is the non-compositional model of idiom processing that you could say treats them like words but it has problems and probably isn't right). The real question is do our explicit categories of "word" and "phrase" map onto how our brain processes language? A heavily analytic language like English is very misleading here... these categories may not exist at all.

In the last few comments, people are mixing phrasal verbs with non-phrasal ones which I would say is non-contradictory. "go off" (explode, rant freely) vs "go off script" are not parsed the same way by your brain. "go off" is a phrasal verb (verb + preposition, meaning cannot be determined by normal processing... you just have to learn what it means), while "go off script" is a verb + adjectival/adverbial phrase, not a phrasal verb. Same with "the alarm is going off" (phrasal verb) vs "the TV's going off" (verb + adjectival/adverbial phrase). Phrasal verbs can have multiple meanings, which I guess you could call homonyms in some sense ("the alarm is going off" and "the yogurt is going off"). Some of these can be contradictory... that gets you closer to what I'd call a contranymal phrase (a phrasal form of a contranym like cleave).

Apparent contradiction against the backdrop of general understanding is a hint you are experiencing the concinnity of human language.

It doesn't exactly fit with the thread, but the word "lucubration" does not mean anything like it sounds.

The concinnity of the bells, bells, bells

Some excellent work itt!

Re Coombes Hitler train: contradictory may not be exactly right but the not specifying the place on the continuum can create an ambiguity in scenarios where the distance between the different potential spots is particularly meaningful — ok this might not apply so much to my own example but in other cases

Writers will often throw in a quite to remove this ambiguity: “if not quite Hitler” unlikely to be understood as “maybe even quite Hitler”

?!

seeing as you've mentioned "quite"... that means both "completely" and "partially"

No the interrobang doesn’t have contradictory meanings it has complementary meanings

(quite is mentioned at length. i did search, but forgot about the fold...)

pretty baffling revive if you ask me, and normally i like this kind of thing

Agree, budo. Nothing will ever top "cleave," and it's weird that anyone thinks we will somehow come up with startling new examples after hundreds of years of talking about this.

"Bad" meaning "good" or "sick" meaning "cool" are a different phenomenon.

Even "ass" as an all-purpose intensifier has already been discussed plenty. Big-ass, piece of ass, half-assed, it's all been unpacked before. Did we really think we were going to come up with a new example?

sad to see an ilx thread flogging a dead horse

Old ilx: takes aim at side of barn, scores direct hit

Nu ilx: well, are we SURE the horse is really dead/most sincerely dead? Maybe a bit more flogging just to be sure.

Future ilx: lame injoke #35, followed closely by injoke #56

I guess all the horses had it coming

pretty baffling revive if you ask me, and normally i like this kind of thing

― budo jeru, Thursday, 16 November 2023 14:25 bookmarkflaglink

????

eleven months pass...
contemporary!

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, November 28, 2018 7:51 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

― budo jeru, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 23:43 bookmarkflaglink

I appreciate the linguistic knowledge upthread- i was thinking mainly of german compound noun-phrases where what would be considered phrases in english turn up "those crazy germans have a long word for everything" type articles because the parts don't have spaces but that's just one specific type of phrase/word

@ CP, i meant the subsequent discussion. obviously my revive proper was immaculate

riffing on language, what is this web site coming to

heaven forbid we should discuss things that were long ago settled by the ancients.

“downhill” is a weird one.. when people say “it was all downhill from there” they mean it got worse and worse from that point. so if you wanted to say the opposite you’d say “it was all uphill from there” but that implies effort and discomfort. uphill is hard! downhill is easy!

it's just really annoying when the boulder starts rolling back down again

well the word downhill hasnt changed meaning and i do think this is a case where the phrase is going to be highly contextualised

i enforce all downhill from here as a positive statement at work and i threaten sanctions if anyone objects

“downhill” is a weird one.. when people say “it was all downhill from there” they mean it got worse and worse from that point. so if you wanted to say the opposite you’d say “it was all uphill from there” but that implies effort and discomfort. uphill is hard! downhill is easy!

i think about this every time and i think a lot of other people must, too. it's amazing the phrase has lasted so long. whoever started it must have lived somewhere with a very steep, dangerous hill

Meanwhile Midwestern Americans are like, "What's a hill?"

Same with Floridians.

My friend got an 18 speed bike growing up and all his friends said "the fuck you need that for?"

I'd parse "it's all downhill from here" when used as a negative statement as meaning "the endeavor/business/artist has achieved their peak ability/quality/performance and aren't going to do better"... it's not a measure of effort, but quality

Downhill is worse on your knees

But better overall when it comes to rolling shit somewhere