Pool: Contranyms for fun and profit

Published 5:30 am Monday, October 9, 2023

Frank T. Pool

I was thinking about identity and led myself to contranyms. Sometimes thinking is a long and winding road that suddenly winds back on itself.

“Identity” has a couple of contradictory meanings. If a police officer identifies a suspect, she has picked out a unique individual. Many of us would like to think that our identity consists of the constellation of memories, events, interactions, feelings and thoughts that make us the only one of us.

But to identify a red-winged blackbird flying over a pond is not to make it unique, but to put it in a class of other things that are in some sense identical with it. We recognize sameness. Aspects of our personal identity are things like race and nationality and sex and religion and our affiliations. “I identify as …” is an expression we hear often these days.

It turns out “identity” is a contranym, which is defined as “a word with contradictory meanings.” The word is also spelled “contronym,” but I prefer the spelling that seems closest to “contradiction.”

Bill Bryson, in his charming book “The Mother Tongue,” gives some good examples of contranyms, and several good websites provide many examples. I know I wrote a column about them a few years ago, yet knowing that people’s memories don’t hold fast, and indeed, fade fast, I am writing this without apology.



“Apology” is a contranym. It can mean an appeal for forgiveness, which is the way we often use it, but it can also be a justification for something. Thus we read about Socrates’ Apology, which does not plead not guilty the charges against him, but which justifies his life and thought. In theology, apologetics is the attempt to justify and give rational reasons for the truthfulness of a religion.

In current slang, saying something is the “bomb” means that something is very good. In older slang, it meant to fail spectacularly. The word “sick” denotes illness and suffering and failure. Among the young, “sick” means outstandingly great. I don’t use words like that — using youthful slang past a certain point in life is to bomb your credibility.

I was once complimented by students for “having drip.” It turns out they meant “stylish,” and did not refer to bladder problems. “He’s such a drip” means something very different from “he has drip.” The latter is what our British cousins call “smart,” or what we used to call “natty.” That’s a word, it seems, only applied to men after a certain age.

To dust means either to remove dust, as in dusting the mantel and furniture, or to add fine powders, such as to dust a croissant with sugar. (Dorothy Parker had her cremated remains put in an urn that said, “pardon my dust,” an interesting urn of phrase.)

When something is critical, it is absolutely necessary. However, to be critical of something is to find fault with it. And yet a good critic is supposed to note both the good and bad of a work or performance. It remains to be seen if “critical theory” is absolutely necessary.

A factoid is either a fake bit of information, a false meme, or else it’s a small but interesting detail that is true.

To fix something can mean to repair it, or to hurt it, as in “I’ll fix you, you rascally rabbit!” Or it can mean that fraud is being perpetrated, “the fix is in.”

There are a couple of older words less used today that are clear contranyms. To hew is to cut or chop. “Hewers of wood and drawers of water” refers to the Biblical books of Joshua and Deuteronomy. To hew wood is to chop it and drawing water was tedious work. These were the menial laborers or perhaps slaves of Hebrew society. Yet to hew to something is to stick closely to it, as in hewing to principles or to a resolution.

“Cleave” is similar. It means both to cut and to hold together.

“Inflammable” means easy to inflame, or else something that can’t be ignited. Inflammatory language can cause you to lose your temper, yet you also temper something when you make it harder, as in tempered steel.

To give sanction for something means to allow it, but to impose sanctions is to apply penalties. Thus certain acts may be sanctioned by law, yet people may be sanctioned by, for example, losing their professional license, for misconduct.

This brings us to “trying.” On the one hand, it means to attempt something, like The Little Engine That Could. Still, trying too hard may try somebody’s patience. A trying person never could succeed in making friends and influencing people.

I could go on, but I don’t think it’s critical to do that. Since I don’t plan to justify quitting now, I guess I’m ending this without apology.