15 Awesome Names For Things You Never Knew Had Names
11. Contronym
A contronym, also known as a self-antonym, is a word for the rare words that have homographs (words that are spelled the exact same way) that are also antonyms (words with opposite meanings). Essentially, these words can themselves act as their own opposites, a bizarre idiosyncrasy of this endlessly fascinating language. There are a few examples of common contronyms in English: one prominent one is inflammable, which can either mean combustible or non-combustible, making it a fairly useless word. Mostly, we now use flammable to denote things that catch fire spontaneously so that, well, they dont. Rent is another example, in that it can refer to either borrowing or lending (or the heartwarming, Tony-winning musical); screen can mean to show or to conceal; oversight means supervision, but an oversight goes unnoticed. And there are surprisingly more examples besides for a language whos main purpose is clarity of communication.
Canadian student. Spends probably an unhealthy amount of time enthusing over musicals, unpopular TV shows, and Harry Potter. Main life goal: to become fluent in Elvish.
