Saturday, January 31, 2009

You Learn Something New Everyday: CONTRONYM

This is interesting:

Cleave: 1 to adhere firmly and closely or loyally and unwaveringly
2
to separate into distinct parts

Cleave is its own
antonym—a contronym. Huh! Here are some more. Comment with any others you can think of. Some of these are a bit of a stretch, but I like them anyway:

bolt - secure v run away
buckle - fasten v fall apart
custom - usual v special
dust - add fine particles v remove fine particles
fast - quick v unmoving
left - remaining v departed from
mean - average v excellent (e.g., "plays a mean game")
out - visible (e.g., stars) v invisible (e.g., lights)
screen - show v hide

I hope you find this as interesting as I do. You think about things like this too, right?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This is the coolest thing ever! I mean I really thought this was interesting and I was sad that there were no comments. It is too cool to be bereft of comments.

Dave said...

When I see cleave I can only think of one time in Earth Science in high school. One of the observational characteristics of rocks is cleavage. I found that really funny at age 14. And still do.

Britton said...

Neato. I'm going to use all of those words in both their meanings in a single sentence.