Contronyms

     Contronyms, that is, words which are their own opposites, have been given such a rich variety of names that there can be no mistaking they engage the interest of those for whom words may be attractive playthings. They have been called contranyms, Janus words, auto-antonyms, autantonym, antagonyms, enantiodromes, self-antonyms, antilogies, or addad (Arabic, singular did). For all the Greek and Latin roots, these terms are recent. A great number of websites provide lists of such words.
     The range of names parallels the range of phenomena they describe; a variety of paths can end in a contronym. The purest form might be that in which two originally separate words developed identical forms, so that their opposition is in a way accidental. This is the case with cleave, for instance, with its meanings of “hold together” and “split apart” and let in the common sense of “allow” and the nearly obsolete one of “bar” or “prevent.” Such apparent self-contradiction is in fact a mere coincidence, words which look the same, but which turn out to have developed from entirely different etymological roots. The verbal usage of rock is derived from a Germanic word meaning “to yank or pull” while the noun is derived from a medieval Latin word for stone. Clip in the sense of cutting has a different root than clip in the sense of fasten together.
     Such accidental similarity is, of course, hardly confined to the realm of the lexicon. I know a poet named George Wallace who has very little in common with the one-time presidential aspirant with whom he shares a name. A ball bearing has the same shape but a different function than a child’s marble. Parallel evolution is familiar to biologists, for instance, in the development of similar animals – litopterns and horses, European and South American saber-toothed tigers, moles, and others -- among marsupial and placental groups since they diverged a hundred million years ago. In these cases, though, the similarity reflects a similar purpose, whereas the verbal appearance is identical but the function altogether different.
     Some contronyms are born of transactional words that indicate a relationship instead of a particular action. To consult, for instance, might mean either to seek or to give advice, and one who leases might be either a landlord or a tenant. In some languages the same word can be used for borrow or lend (e.g. German ausleihen), while In English etymologically guest and host are derived from the same word and simply happen to have developed distinct uses over time. Here the contradiction is resolved simply by defining the word as “to enter into a relationship” rather than to take a specific action. This process, too, has non-linguistic parallels. A merchant may be either buying or selling, and, if an individual is said to be “into sm,” it remains undetermined whether he or she favors the first or the second of those letters.
     A variety of other circumstances can also produce contronyms. Meaning, like plants, can form branches which grow independently. Fast, for instance, from a root meaning of “firm and solid,” acquired an intensive meaning that eventually developed into the more common modern definition “speedy,” in such usages as to run fast. In an analogous way outside the realm of words, the associations of tobacco have mutated from the original ceremonial and sacred uses through suggestions of sophistication and conviviality to the present connotations of addiction, illness, and death.
     However they arose, such words cast a light on the imprecision inherent in all signifying. A modern critic contemplating contronyms will think of Derrida and the recognition that meaning is “always already erased.” A polemicist could declare them the only honest words in that they admit their utter ambiguity.
     If one were to imagine an entire language made of such words, what would any utterance really mean?  Would all statements be substantially the same? Would every statement be both trivial and profoundly meaningful? Perhaps the linguistic system would then more closely mirror the subatomic realm in which positives and negatives balance and, in the end, cancel each other. It certainly seems as though matter and antimatter should also similarly balance, though at present physicists say they do not.
     Long before Deconstruction, the revelation of the limits of duality was common to many of the most lofty of thinkers. The old man Lao Zi was at home amid such cosmic speculations which seem indeterminate as they founder with the burden of vast implications. He repeatedly insisted “is and is-not come together.” Hard and easy, long and short, high and low, beauty and ugliness. (poem 2) ‘The heavy is foundation for the light. (26) “What is to be shrunken is first stretched out.” (36) “Bad fortune will promote the good.” (58) To have an original thought, one must not shrink from self-contradiction.
     The rishis who declared the Advaita revelation that the individual and the godhead are identical knew the explosive potential of paradox and mystery. Christ spoke in paradoxes. Nagarjuna saw in every statement its opposite. Blake wrote “Without contraries is no progression” and knew that body and soul were one.
     So it may happen (to the leximaniacal at any rate) that contronyms lift a bit of the curtain of maya, providing a glimpse beyond, a chance to see all things new. They remind one of how slippery the words that we use to package and contain our flowing perceptions bear no guarantee but their own unreliability. Reflecting on such words, if it provides little progress toward certainty, will perhaps remind the thinker of the unstable ground beneath everybody’s conceptual feet.