13 hilarious examples of contronyms

Dubai - Shashi Tharoor's World of Words is a weekly column in which the politician, diplomat, writer and wordsmith par excellence dissects words and language

A recent headline declared that the United States had sanctioned Iranian oil supplies. Many readers weren’t sure what the newspaper meant, since “sanction” is a contronym — a word that can also mean the opposite of itself, a feature more common in English than in any other language. In this instance, confusion was inevitable, because the headline could mean the President had permitted the oil supplies to flow, or that he had prohibited them. If you get a sanction from an authority to do something, it means the former; but if you impose sanctions on someone or something, it means the latter. The word “sanction” can either refer to approval for a course of action or a penalty for disobeying an injunction. That’s why it’s a contronym, also sometimes known as a “Janus word” (after the Roman god with two faces).

Confused? “Sanction” is not the only case of a word that can be used to mean its own opposite. We use contronyms all the time without realising it; the most common contronym might be the word “off”, since “setting off” an alarm activates a warning bell, while “switching off” the alarm deactivates it — and both use the same “off”. If you find too many objects gathering dust at home, you can tell your maid that she needs to dust more so there is less dust (that’s not a contradiction, just a contronym!). Similarly, strike can be used to mean to create (as in “strike a deal”) or to eliminate (“strike that line from the record”).

When the United Nations created an in-house inspectorate and named the department the Office of Internal Oversight Services, I warned my colleagues, only half in jest, that every time the new office messed up, they could say, “Hey, it was just an oversight.” Oversight is also a contronym: it can mean watchful supervision, but also an inadvertent error. Similarly, the word “cleave” can mean both “to cut apart” (“the warrior cleaved his enemy’s head from his neck”) or “to bind together” (“the infant cleaved to his mother’s breast”). So can “clip” mean to cut something (as in a newspaper clipping) or to hold them together (“Can you clip those clippings together please?”). A criminal might “bolt” (meaning he runs away or “exits quickly”) but you can bolt the door shut (meaning fix it in place to immobilise it).

wknd@khaleejtimes.com