Crigl @Crigl@social.cleverlibre.org

The following is a list of auto-antonyms, words which have two or more definitions where each is the opposite of the other, yet thanks to the beauty of language these words are rarely confusing to most of us:

“Appropriate” can mean “to give (money or assets) to” or “to delegate to,” as well as “to take something (for one’s own use).”

"Bound" can mean "tied into immobility" or "leaping, jumping.”

"Cite" can mean "to recognize a good deed or performance" (cite for bravery) or "to require a court appearance" (often not a good thing, such as citing for DUI).

"Chuffed" can mean "pleased" or "displeased".

"Cleave" can mean "to cling" or "to split apart".

"Clip" can mean "attach" or "cut off"."

"Conclude" can mean "to start" (a contract) or "to end".

"Demiurge" can refer either to God as the creator or to the devil, depending on philosophical context.

"Drop" can mean to delete or eliminate (e.g., to drop a song from a playlist), but it is also slang for releasing an artistic creation into the world (e.g., to drop a new song on a music streaming service). So, the sentence "Her latest song was dropped" has two opposing meanings.

"Down" can mean unhappy ("I'm feeling down") or happy ("I'm down with that").

"Downhill" can mean things are getting worse, or getting easier.

"Draw" the curtains can mean either to open them or to close them.

"Dust" can mean to remove dust (cleaning a house) or to add dust (e.g. to dust a cake with powdered sugar).

"Egregious" can mean "outstandingly bad". Was originally used to mean

"remarkably good". The word's roots mean simply "standing out from the rest of the group", a concept that can apply either "in a good way" or "in a bad way".

"Execute" can mean either "to begin" (a plan or an action), or "to terminate" (a person).

"Factoid" can refer either to a genuinely true but insignificant statement, or (less often) to a false statement presented as true.

"Fast" as an adjective or adverb can mean "without moving; fixed in place", as in "holding fast" (also as in "steadfast"), or it can mean "moving quickly".

"Hew" can mean "to chop" or (in North America) "to adhere".

"Impregnable" can mean "invulnerable" and also vulnerable (to impregnation).

"Inflammable" technically means "capable of burning" ("in-" functioning as an intensifier) but is commonly misunderstood to mean "unburnable".

"Let" can mean "allow" or "prevent" (A British Passport contains a request that the bearer be allowed to "pass without let or hindrance".)

"Left" can mean "remain" or "leave" ("He left the room" or "He was the last one left in the room")

"Limit" can be inclusive or exclusive. For example, a request to "limit the damage to the clock tower" can mean to protect the clock tower from damage or to protect everything else but the clock tower from damage.

"Nonplussed" can mean "baffled" or "perplexed", but in North America can also be taken mean "not disconcerted" or "unperturbed" (a disputed usage)

"Off" can mean "activated" / "beginning to make a noise" (e.g. "The alarm went off") or "deactivated" / "ceasing operation" (e.g. "The alarm turned off by itself").

"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 either to read or go over attentively or read in a casual or cursory manner (e.g. peruse the collection).

"Ravel" can mean either to separate (e.g. threads in cloth) or entangle.

"Refrain" can mean either non-action or the repetition of an action (e.g. in musical notation).

"Restive" can mean "having difficulty staying still" ("restless") or "reluctant to move", though the latter is not a widely accepted meaning.

"Sanction" can mean "approve" or "penalize".

"Scan" can mean "scrutinize" or "skim".

"Strike" can mean to act decisively, or to refuse to act. Also, it can mean to hit, or to miss (as in baseball). In addition, it can mean to create ("strike a deal") or eliminate ("strike that line from the record").

"Table" can mean to discuss a topic at a meeting, or to postpone discussion of a topic.

"Weather" can mean withstand something (i.e. to weather the storm) but also to wear down or age.

#language #inguistics #english

Hi there if you are in America I suggest you ASAP contact your congressperson and ask them to oppose the CASE act, a weird copyright bill being voted on tomorrow

EFF:
https://twitter.com/EFF/status/1186324235557335040

Verge article:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/23/20703742/case-act-copyright-office-online-designers-congress-bill

Short version: Now in addition to normal courts plus the DMCA there'd be this new weird copyright quasi-court. By my read if notice is served and you don't respond within 60 days you could get hit with a $15,000 fine as default judgement. Sounds really easy to abuse.

damn checking my phone is fuckin boring lemme check my phone instead real quick

having a conversation with me is so fucked up. im such a wild card, you never know when i might say some shit like "i disagree"

yesterday I trudged up to eglwysilan, a soaked spongy upland area above the taf. it's full of ancient trackways and field systems. the stone walls follow prehistoric boundaries. st Ilan stands lonely in its field and was forever too far away until finally I got there and saw THIS.
it's a sandstone slab carved with a naive round headed little fella carrying a round little sheild. I've read 8-10th cent, but let's be fair who the fuck knows how old it is. it was found in 1904 when digging a grave

400% sure that identity is just stapling together other people's pictures of you

CONCEPT: Two teams from different sports have to play each other in a third sport. They're not informed which sport until they show up to play.

me: one must be particularly careful when applying contemporary labels to premodern culture, as every aspect of their conception of selves and communities differs from ours in ways we can scarcely imagine

also me: sir gawain, knight of the round table at camelot, is a gay enby and a bratty sub

cutting down on single use plastics by diving into the sea and strangling turtles with my bare hands

Thinking about the time me and my friend started playing second life and he actually spent money on it and got a house but his neighbour wouldn't stop sitting on his porch openly masturbating so he purposefully put trees where they'd clip into his house and got reported

let's have a moment of appreciation for the reddit post where a ancap wanders into a greek anarchist squat and gets his ass beat (1/2)

they call them the silent generation because they had dogshit content and no subscribers

Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time. http://hi.r8h.pw/RGX9Gx

coming out the toilets sniffing like slavoj zizek

Did you know that Jacqueline Stallone (*that* Stallone) is "the foremost American rumpologist". What is rumpology you ask? Why, it is the art of reading your future by looking at your ass.

A tool to create custom smartphone keyboard layouts for languages beyond those typically supported by tech companies https://t.co/UAKoXJCpRl #linguistics

arby's is named after jon arbuckle

2 girls 1 cup passes the bechdel test.

tarot is rigged. they don't even let you bring your own deck to counter their attacks. how are you supposed to win