Cleave, dust, and screen are all words that can mean the opposite of themselves. You can cleave to a belief, meaning to “adhere closely,” but you can also separate things by cleaving them. Words that mean the opposite of themselves go by many different names, including contranyms, contronyms, auto-antonyms, and Janus words. Lists from an MIT teacher, Polysemania Blog, and this website on English Word Information. Martha talks about enantiodromia, which is “the process by which something becomes its opposite,” particularly when an individual or community adopts beliefs antithetical to beliefs they held earlier. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Auto-Antonyms”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name’s Holly. I’m calling from Madison.
Hiya, Holly.
Hiya, Holly. Madison, Wisconsin, then.
Madison, Wisconsin.
Well, Holly, what are you calling us about today?
I was wondering if there was a term for words that mean their own opposites.
And I have a couple of examples.
One word that I think fits this is the word cleave.
Cleave can mean to split apart or to cling together.
Right.
And the other word I think fits this is oversight.
-huh.
And I didn’t know if there was a term for words that mean their own opposites or if there were other examples.
Oh, there are definitely other examples.
Tons of stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It’s great stuff.
It’s great fun.
Contronym is a word that I see a lot for this.
Contronym, like C-O-N-T-R-O-N-Y-M.
Okay.
Or with an A, contranim.
And I’ve also seen autoantonym, self-antonym.
Oh.
They’ve also been called Janus words.
You know, Janus was the Roman god who had two faces.
And we get the word January from that because he was looking back into the past and into the future.
Yeah, some of my favorites are dust.
You know, like you dust to get dust off of things, but then you also dust a cake with powdered sugar.
Sure.
That one works for you, right?
In the case of cleave, I mean, it’s actually two different words.
There’s one cleave that means to stick.
It’s related to the word for clay.
And then the other one, I think, is related to cutting words.
So it’s actually two different words that look exactly the same.
There’s a ton of this stuff.
If you Google Janus words, which is, I actually prefer this term because it’s a little less jargony.
And I think it’s a little more memorable, although it might be a little less comprehensible.
Does that make sense?
Janus, J-A-N-U-S.
Oh, sure.
I like that one.
You’ll find tons of lists of this stuff on the Internet.
Screen is a favorite one.
It’s a modern one.
If you screen a movie, you’re showing it, right?
But if you screen somebody at the airport while they’re undressing for security, that means you’re blocking the view to them.
There’s a ton of this kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
All right.
Well, thanks for calling.
Thanks so much, Holly.
Okay.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
One more word for you, Grant.
Yes, dear.
An anteodromia.
What does that mean?
It’s the process by which something becomes its opposite and the subsequent interaction of the two applied especially to the adoption by an individual or a community, etc., of a set of beliefs, etc., opposite to those held at an earlier stage.
Isn’t that great?
So this is like the television show Heroes, where future Peter goes back in time to past Peter and tries to get him to not do some things that make the world explode.
Exactly.
That is an anteodromic television show.
Something like that.
If you want to find out more about things like Janus words or what you call a particular language phenomenon, we’d love to help you.
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