An []auto-antonym or autantonym, also called a contronym, contranym or Janus word, is a word with multiple meanings of which one is the reverse of another. For example, the word' can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This phenomenon is called enantiosemy, enantionymy, antilogy or autantonymy'''. An enantiosemic term is necessarily polysemic.
Nomenclature
The terms "autantonym" and "contronym" were coined by Joseph Twadell Shipley in 1960 and Jack Herring in 1962, respectively. An auto-antonym is alternatively called an antagonym, Janus word, enantiodrome, enantionym, self-antonym, antilogy, or addad.
Linguistic mechanisms
Some pairs of contronyms are true homographs, i.e., distinct words with different etymology which happen to have the same form. For instance cleave "separate" is from Old Englishclēofan, while cleave "adhere" is from Old Englishclifian, which was pronounced differently. The King James Bible often uses "let" in the sense of "forbid", a meaning which is now uncommon, and which is derived from the Old English verblettan 'hinder, delay, impede, oppress', as opposed to the meaning "allow", which is derived from the Old English verblǣtan 'leave, allow, let on lease '. The alternative meaning of "let" can still be found in the legal phrase "without let or hindrance" and in ball games such as tennis, squash, table tennis, and racquetball. Other contronyms are a form of polysemy, but where a single word acquires different and ultimately opposite definitions. For example, sanction—"permit" or "penalize"; bolt —"leave quickly" or "fix/immobilize"; fast—"moving rapidly" or "unmoving". Some English examples result from nouns being verbed in the patterns of "add <noun> to" and "remove <noun> from"; e.g. dust, seed, stone. Denotations and connotations can drift or branch over centuries. An apocryphal story relates how Charles II described St Paul's Cathedral as "awful, pompous, and artificial," with the meaning of "awe-inspiring, majestic, and ingeniously designed". Negative words such as bad and sick sometimes acquire ironic senses referring to traits that are impressive and admired, if not necessarily positive. Some contronyms result from differences in varieties of English. For example, to table a bill means "to put it up for debate" in British English, while it means "to remove it from debate" in American English. To ' for anyone in Australian English is to loudly demonstrate your support, while it expresses disapproval and contempt in British English. Some words contain simultaneous opposing or competing meanings in the same context, rather than alternative meanings in different contexts; examples include blend words such as coopetition, frenemy, glocalization, etc. These are not usually classed as contronyms, but they share the theme of containing opposing meanings. Auto-antonyms exist in many languages, as the following examples show. In Latin, ' has the double meaning "sacred, holy" and "accursed, infamous". Greek gave Latin its ', from which English got its ', which can refer either to God as the creator or to the devil, depending on philosophical context. In many languages, a word stem associated with a single event may treat the action of that event as unitary, so it can refer to any of the doings or persons on either side of the transaction, that is, to the action of either the subject or the object, or to either the person who does something or the person to whom it is done. Other cues nail down the aspects of subject versus object. Thus there is a simple logic involved, despite that discussions of such words sometimes fixate on a superficial appearance of illogic such as in words for borrow and lend; see #Examples below.
Examples
English
Bound can mean "tied into immobility" or a "leap or jump".
Cleave can mean "to cling" or "to split apart".
Clip can mean "attach" or "cut off".
Conclude can mean "to start" or "to end".
Dust can mean "to remove dust " or "to add dust".
Fast can mean "without moving; fixed in place",, or "moving quickly".
Impregnable can mean "invulnerable" or "vulnerable".
Let can mean "allow" or "prevent".
Left can mean "remain" or "leave".
Off can mean "activated", "beginning to make a noise" or "deactivated" / "ceasing operation".
Overlook can mean to miss seeing something, or a place to see something from above.
Oversight can mean "accidental omission or error", or "close scrutiny and 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" or "entangle".
Sanction can mean "approve" or "penalize".
Table can mean "to discuss a topic at a meeting" or "to postpone discussion of a topic".
Other languages
Verbs
* The German verb ', the Russian verb and the Finnish verb ' can mean either "to lend" or "to borrow", with case, pronouns, and mention of persons making the sense clear. The verb stem conveys that "a lending-and-borrowing event is occurring", and the other cues convey who is lending to whom. This makes sense because anytime lending is occurring, borrowing is simultaneously occurring; one cannot happen without the other.
* The Romanian verb a închiria means "to rent" as well as "to let".
* The Swahili verb kutoa means both "to remove" and "to add".
* In his Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, Qian Zhongshu gave some examples of Chinese auto-antonyms, like "廢" meaning both "to abolish" and "to establish". He named this kind of phenomenon "reverse symbolism".
* The Persian verb چیدن means both " to pluck" and "to arrange".
Adverbs
* कल and کل may mean either "yesterday" or "tomorrow".
*ar ball can mean both "a while ago" and "in a little bit/later on"
* The Italian and Frenchcognates, ' and ', respectively, also can mean "host" or "guest". Both words derive from the Latin :wikt:hospes|hospes, which also carries both meanings.
Adjectives
Seeming auto-antonyms can occur from translation. In Hawaiian, for example, ' is translated both as "hello" and as "goodbye", but the essential meaning of the word is "love", whether used as a greeting or farewell. The Italian greeting ' is translated as "hello" or "goodbye" depending on the context; however, the original meaning was " slave".
