Seven words that can mean their opposite

Has anyone ever wished you a sick time, or said you make a mean revision timetable?

You probably already know they weren’t being rude, but you may not know they were using a contronym. Contronyms are words that can have two opposing meanings; they go by several other names including autoantonyms, antagonyms and Janus words, after the literally two-faced Roman god Janus.

Contronyms are different from oxymorons, which are combinations of contradictory meanings, such as ‘bittersweet’ or ‘old news'.

You might use contronyms more than you realise. Take a look at these fascinating words that are at odds with themselves.

1. Dust to dust

The word ‘dust’, meaning particles of debris, is not a contronym when it’s a noun. However, as a verb, it has two meanings: you might dust something to cover it with particles, e.g. dusting a cake with icing sugar, but you can also dust to sweep them away.

If you’re asked to dust your shelves at home, you’re most likely being asked to clean, so be sure not to mix these two up.

2. Weather the weather

Homophones can make the English language a bit confusing – think of a sentence like 'which witch is which?', in which (sorry…) every word sounds the same but has a different meaning.

As well as being a homophone, the word ‘weather’ also gets the contronym treatment. When something is ‘weathered’ it’s exposed to the elements and worn down. But when you ‘weather’ something, you endure it – so depending on whether you have a suitable raincoat, you might weather the weather so it can’t weather you.

3. Quick, don’t move!

'Fast' is another Janus word. You can move fast, meaning quickly, or you can stand fast, meaning there's little or no movement both physically and in terms of opinions. ‘Hold fast’ is a nautical phrase which is thought to come from the Dutch houd vast (hold tight), referring to securing a ship’s ropes.

It's unclear why ‘fast’ came to mean at great speed, as firmly fixed is its earliest meaning – although it has fast fallen out of common usage since.

4. All or nothing

The word ‘aught’ is probably less common in your everyday usage, but it means all or everything. However, in some cases it can also be the name of the mathematical digit also known as zero (0), or the way it's read out loud (particularly in American English) – so aught can mean literally all or nothing!

5. Cleaved in twain

A more classic-sounding example is the word ‘cleave’ – you may have heard knights of old in films threating to cleave their foes in twain, with twain coming from the Old English word for ‘two’. Cleave is also from Old English, but it is thought its two opposite meanings come from two different roots, clēofan and clifian, and that may be how the word ended up with two meanings. The first meaning is to split or separate, and the second to stick closely.

6. Bolt like an arrow

Both meanings of the word bolt come from their noun form, which originally referred to an arrow in Old English. In Middle English, during the Medieval period, the name started being applied to other metal rods, including the part of a lock that springs out.

So the verb form of bolt meaning ‘to shoot off quickly’ comes from the movement of an arrow, and bolt meaning ‘to secure’ comes from the fastenings named after it – and now we have two contradictory meanings.

7. Not bad but good

Sometimes the influence of slang gives a word another meaning, so we end up with contronyms such as ‘bad’, ‘sick’, ‘nasty’, ‘mean’, and ‘wicked’ – which can all have a positive or negative meaning depending on the context.

The use of ‘bad’ to mean very good may have been influenced by US American English, specifically from AAVE (African American Vernacular English), while ‘sick’ may have developed a positive meaning from the subcultures of the late 1980s and 1990s.

These contronyms serve as an interesting record of how language changes and develops over time through culture. Wicked!

This article was published in April 2024