Writers' resources: a language thread
FinsburyParkCarrots
Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
Words that can mean their opposite
There are words in the English language that can mean opposite things in different contexts. A cliff face can "weather" a storm but a storm will "weather" (erode) a cliff face. The word "asylum" can mean a safe haven or connote incarceration. One can "screen" (render public) a movie yet one can hide behind a screen.
Sophisticated
If someone is said to be sophisticated we consider them refined, worldly-wise and erudite. However, "sophistication" in the eighteenth century had connotations of sophistry and meant falseness, nothing to do with worldliness as such: a sophisticated person would be affected or a sophisticated piece of music would somehow be corrupted by artificiality. To an extent both older and contemporary meanings still inform "definition" of the word.
Nice
Back in the thirteenth century in England, nice meant foolish. By the time of Shakespeare the word meant finnicky, prissy and over fastidious. In later usage it means pleasantly agreeable. One often hears and reads people make use of the polysemantic potentiality of this seemingly innocuous word to berate one another!
Quite
"Wow, that's quite special!" You hear that phrase a lot. I don't think the speaker means, "That's a little bit on the special side but not particularly," for that would be damning something with faint praise! No, "quite" in this case seems to mean not so much "a little bit" as the opposite "really quite considerably" special! Especially special!
Sanction
If you grant sanction to a proposal for planning permission regarding a house extension, you are giving someone freedom to conduct that scheme of action.
However, if you levy sanctions against a certain body, you are imposing punishment against it by denying it access to certain freedoms and resources.
Sanction gives and takes away.
Freedom
Isaiah Berlin pointed out quite opposing notions of freedom. Negative freedom is liberty from oppression, persecution and restriction of basic human rights. Positive freedom is, potentially, liberty to oppress, persecute and restrict others' human rights.
Could you suggest more examples?
There are words in the English language that can mean opposite things in different contexts. A cliff face can "weather" a storm but a storm will "weather" (erode) a cliff face. The word "asylum" can mean a safe haven or connote incarceration. One can "screen" (render public) a movie yet one can hide behind a screen.
Sophisticated
If someone is said to be sophisticated we consider them refined, worldly-wise and erudite. However, "sophistication" in the eighteenth century had connotations of sophistry and meant falseness, nothing to do with worldliness as such: a sophisticated person would be affected or a sophisticated piece of music would somehow be corrupted by artificiality. To an extent both older and contemporary meanings still inform "definition" of the word.
Nice
Back in the thirteenth century in England, nice meant foolish. By the time of Shakespeare the word meant finnicky, prissy and over fastidious. In later usage it means pleasantly agreeable. One often hears and reads people make use of the polysemantic potentiality of this seemingly innocuous word to berate one another!
Quite
"Wow, that's quite special!" You hear that phrase a lot. I don't think the speaker means, "That's a little bit on the special side but not particularly," for that would be damning something with faint praise! No, "quite" in this case seems to mean not so much "a little bit" as the opposite "really quite considerably" special! Especially special!
Sanction
If you grant sanction to a proposal for planning permission regarding a house extension, you are giving someone freedom to conduct that scheme of action.
However, if you levy sanctions against a certain body, you are imposing punishment against it by denying it access to certain freedoms and resources.
Sanction gives and takes away.
Freedom
Isaiah Berlin pointed out quite opposing notions of freedom. Negative freedom is liberty from oppression, persecution and restriction of basic human rights. Positive freedom is, potentially, liberty to oppress, persecute and restrict others' human rights.
Could you suggest more examples?
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The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
"I feel the same way about disco as I do herpes" -Hunter S. Thompson
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
gay....used to mean happy....
xmas....has replaced Christmas......
in God we trust....has replaced in God alone we trust......
smart....can be an adverb as in 'smartly dressed'.......
(nobody consulted me on these language variations...why?)
fat.....is not fashionable....now we have cuddly
stupid is obsolete.....now it's moron or retard....
it's all fashion Fins.......
it's all irony....although I think people have varying ideas of what irony is.....
In German, the word for Uncanny means the same as canny and yet means its opposite. Freud wrote an essay about this in 1919. In German, uncanny is "Unheimlich": literally, unhomely. Yet by some semantic phenomenon, "unheimlich" also means the same as "heimlich", homely. So, something that is "unheimlich" is at once unhomely and homely, unfamiliar and familiar. At the same time. So when one has a strange sense of strangeness in familiar settings, or a feeling of having met a complete stranger before, that is uncanniness, a word that can contain its opposite meanings simultaneously!
:cool:
there's no such thing as 'kempt' but there's unkempt.....
there's no such thing as unarguably, but there's arguably.....
a pettifoger is an interesting thing.....almost like a shyster.....yiddish is a great language.....
souvenir comes from the french sou as in souçon (a small thing) and venir to come.....
a malapropism....comes from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta....
the etymology of words.....reveals so much about culture....I love looking at common prefixes and suffixes....if you know what the prefix or suffix means then its use in different words is very revealing.....for example, I don't speak greek....but the use of cata as a prefix in various words.....leads me to think cata must mean change in classical greek.....
(if anyone knows of a post-graduate on-line linguistics course that covers computer languages in Artificial Intelligence.....please PM me.....La Dolce Vita is an interesting film)......
1 Did you know that the phrase "raining cats and dogs" comes from olden times when roofs were thatched and houses had no loft insulation or central heating? Pets would live in the attic for warmth. Come a bad storm rain would come through the thatching, sending the pets hurrying down through the house!
2 In days of yore, there wasn't great hygiene so, come adulthood many women would have acne scars that they would cover with beeswax. If one woman stared too closely at another's waxed face to observe where the scars were beneath the glaze, they might be told to mind their own beeswax.
Now people just tell each other to mind their own buzzzzziness.
3 It's allegedly an ancient Macedonian proverb alluding to the playwright Euripides's demise in the fifth century BCE: Ravaging dogs were set on the poor blighter, by a rival. The phrase has come to mean that everyone will have their moment of success/ascendancy/revenge in life. Note Hamlet, Act five, scene one: The cat will mew and dog will have its day".
I use teh word 'sophisticated' in a wholly derogatory way. I say....'people in Madrid are open, friendly and warm, but people in London are very sophisticated..' even as I say it.....I know it's true....people in London are more clever.....and people in Madrid are better.....oooppppsss
Let's explore words and phrases that vary across both sides of the Atlantic so that confusion may no longer reign o'er us! Please research variants and include them here. We'll then know our drawing pin is our thumbtack, our paraffin is our kerosene, our telly is our TV and our letter zed is our letter zee!
an actress is an actor
now women are considered strong enough to be able to cope with male group titles....
why was she an actress....when a doctor was never a doctress....
we have the european languages to thank for all this him and her.....
but what language do you imagine could survive teh scourge of feminism any more.......
I say my son is my daughter.....I'm a son and a daughter....but mostly I'm a child......
is sex teh new revolution.......(Jesus?)
Disinterested means "impartial". Uninterested means "not interested."
Alternate and alternative
As adjectives, an alternate option is the second of two successive (alternating) options. An alternative option is one option of many. So when someone produces a book of alternate guitar tunings, they should have produced a book of alternative guitar tunings.