English •
Cleave can mean "to cling" or "to split apart". •
Clip can mean "attach" or "cut off". •
Dust can mean "to remove dust" (e.g. to clean a house) or "to add dust" (e.g. to dust a cake with powdered sugar). •
Fast can mean "without moving; fixed in place", (holding fast, fastened, also as in "steadfast"), or "moving quickly". •
Overlook can mean "to make an accidental omission or error" or "to engage in close scrutiny or control". •
Oversight can mean "accidental omission or error" or "close scrutiny or control". •
Peruse can mean to "consider with attention and in detail" or "look over or through in a casual or cursory manner". •
Ravel can mean "to separate" (e.g. threads in cloth) or "to entangle". •
Sanction can mean "to give approval" or "to impose a penalty upon". •
Table can mean "to discuss a topic at a meeting" (
British English) or "to postpone discussion of a topic" (
American English). Canadian English uses both meanings of the word.
Denotations and
connotations of words can drift or branch over centuries. An
apocryphal story relates how
Charles II (or sometimes
Queen Anne) described
St Paul's Cathedral (using contemporaneous English) as "", with the meaning (rendered in modern English) of "amazing, awe-inspiring, and artistic".
Other languages Verbs • The
Romanian verb
a închiria, the
French verb
louer, the
Afrikaans verb
huur, the Finnish verb
vuokrata and the Spanish mean "to rent" (as the
lessee does) as well as "to let" (as the
lessor does). The
English verb '''' can also describe either the lessee's or the lessor's role. • In Spanish (basic meaning "to give"), when applied to lessons or subjects, can mean "to teach", "to take classes" or "to recite", depending on the context. Similarly with the
French verb
apprendre, which usually means "to learn" but may refer to the action of teaching someone. Dutch and
Afrikaans can mean "to teach" or "to learn". • In
Hebrew the root נכר can mean "to recognize" or "to be a stranger [to
not be recognized]" (
Marcus Jastrow,
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. New York: Pardes, 1950, vol. II,911-912). The root appears 4 times in Genesis 42:7-8 (Jonathan Sacks,
The Koren Shalem Humash with Rashi and Onkelos. Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2025, 305). • In
Greek some verbs that begin with the prefix "
από-"
(apo-) can have a contranym meaning. A prominent example is the verb "
αποφράζω" means "
to plug something, to fill a hole", and is usually used as a medical term, based on the original ancient Greek meaning. The more modern Greek meaning is "
to unplug something, remove a blockage". Similar verbs are "
απογεμίζω", that can both mean "
to fill up to a brim" and "
to empty completely" and "
απομαθαίνω", that can both mean "
to learn something very well" and "
to forget something I learned". The meaning that negates the main action, is usually a more modern Greek one. The prefix "apo-" sometimes enhances an action and sometimes negates it. • There are two
Latin verbs , one meaning "to bring into shape," the other meaning "to bring out of shape."
Adverbs • can mean "toward the sea" or "away from the sea" depending on dialect. • can mean "a while ago" or "in a little bit/later on"
Adjectives • The
Latin sinister meant both "auspicious" and "inauspicious", within the respective Roman and Greek traditions of
augury. The negative meaning was carried on into French and ultimately English. • Latin means "excessive, too much". It maintained this meaning in Spanish , but it was also misinterpreted as "insignificant, without importance". • In
Korean, '''' (yeonpae) means either "consecutive losses" (the
Sino-Korean word ) or "consecutive wins" (orthographic borrowing of
Japanese ). • In
Vietnamese, means among other things "bright, clear" (from
Sino-Vietnamese ) and "dead, gloomy" (from ). Because of this, the name of the dwarf planet
Pluto is not adapted from as in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. • In
Japanese, 適当 (tekitou) can mean both "suitable, proper" and "sloppy, careless". • Spanish meant originally "blissful, fortunate" as in , "fortunate land". However it developed an ironic and colloquial meaning "bothersome, unlucky", as in , "Damned flies!".
In translation Seeming contronyms can arise from translation. In
Hawaiian, for example,
aloha is translated both as "hello" and as "goodbye", but the essential meaning of the word is "love", whether used as a greeting or farewell. Similarly,
안녕 (
annyeong) in
Korean and
שלום (
shalom) in
Hebrew can mean both "hello" and "goodbye" but the central meaning is "peace". The
Italian greeting
ciao is translated as "hello" or "goodbye" depending on the context; the original meaning was "at your service" (literally "(I'm your) slave"). == See also ==