Exciting news
Today I discovered a second word that can be its own antonym. (The first is ‘cleave’ – ‘cleave from parents, cleave to wife’.) My one is ‘certain’. As in: ‘there is a certain sense of solidarity between us’. Which could mean either ‘there is undoubtadly, definetly a sense of solidarity between us’ or ‘there is a particular, limited sense of solidarity between us’. It’s a technical call, certainly.
5 responses to “Exciting news”
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http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-74.html
you might like this, immo?
Is good, cheers.
A pair of French words which can be very confusing:
La symetrie (symmetry) and L’asymetrie (asymmetry).
Hilarity ensues
Hmm
Methinks the ‘certain’ in the example can mean both a the same time…, so maybe they aint antynyminity, possible’?
what about ‘summation’ which is both the process of adding something, and the conclusion or end part of a speech where no more new information is added.
yeah i’ve oft been intrigued by that ‘certain’ one.
it all started a long time ago when i was a youngster watching the labyrinth (featuring david bowie). at one point, the protagonist babysitter (played by the girl who was russel crowe’s wife in ‘a beautiful mind’) faced a choice between two or more doors. one of the doors led to ‘certain death’. at the time i mistook which sense of ‘certain’ was intended and thought ‘well, thats not so bad… i mean everyone has to die eventually… what if the certain death featured behind the door in question is a relatively pleasant one, like dying in your sleep in the fullness of time?’
[much] later on i woke to my foolishness and recanted.