Thursday, April 14

Homophonic Antonyms




....or is it antonymic homophones.

Paula had a eureka moment in the comments on this post. She points out that raised and razed are both homophones and antonyms.

Do you know of any other word pairs that would fit the homophonic antonymn category?

[Update 1: Brandon, who is, it would seem, the reigning King of Nyms, adds erupt and irrupt.

He adds that there are words that can be their own antonyms, and they have their own label: contronyms or antagonyms. His example? The verb dust, which can mean either "add dust" or "remove dust". Feel free to add words that fall in in that category as well.

Update 2: Scott Rezsnyak adds cleave to our very short (so far) list of contronyms (aka antagonyms).

Update 3: Jeremy Pierce gives us a link to a whole page of antagonyms.

Update 4: Jeremy Pierce adds another contronym: to throw out. To throw something out can mean to remove something or not include it, but it can also be used to refer to putting an idea forward to be included with other ideas for consideration.]
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