There exist many words
whose meanings are
opposites of themselves. You
may ask, how can a word be
an antonym of itself?
Through polysemy and
homonymy, a word that is
pronounced or spelled the
same way can have opposite
meanings. A word that is an
antonym of itself is called a
contronym.
Here’s the list of some
contronyms:
1. Clip
Clip can mean “to bind
together” or “to separate.”
You clip sheets of paper to
together or separate part of a
page by clipping something
out. Clip is a pair of
homographs, words with
different origins spelled the
same.
Old English clyppan, which
means “to clasp with the arms,
embrace, hug,” led to our
current meaning, “to hold
together with a clasp.” The
other clip, “to cut or snip (a
part) away,” is from Old Norse
klippa, which may come from
the sound of a shears.
2. Continue
Continue usually means to
persist in doing something, but
as a legal term it means stop a
proceeding temporarily.
3. Fight with
Fight with can be interpreted
three ways. “He fought with
his mother-in-law” could mean
“They argued,” “They served
together in the war,” or “He
used the old battle-ax as a
weapon.”
4. Flog
Meaning “to punish by caning
or whipping,” flog shows up in
school slang of the 17th
century, but now it can have
the contrary meaning, “to
promote persistently,” as in
“flogging a new book.”
Perhaps that meaning arose
from the sense ‘to urge (a
horse, etc.) forward by
whipping,’ which grew out of
the earliest meaning.
5. Go
Go means “to proceed,” but
also “give out or fail,” i.e.,
“This car could really go until
it started to go.”
6. Hold up
Hold up can mean “to support”
or “to hinder”: “What a friend!
When I’m struggling to get on
my feet, he’s always there to
hold me up.”
7. Out
Out can mean “visible” or
“invisible.” For example, “It’s
a good thing the full moon
was out when the lights went
out.”
8. Out of
Out of means “outside” or
“inside”: “I hardly get out of
the house because I work out
of my home.”
9. Peer
Peer is a person of equal status
(as in a jury of one’s peers),
but some peers are more equal
than others, like the members
of the peerage, the British or
Irish nobility.
10. Toss out
Toss out could be either “to
suggest” or “to discard”: “I
decided to toss out the idea.”

Nice

contronyms