Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Thursday 2 October 2014

Words That Mean Their Opposites

It's a grand old tradition, of course- "trim" can mean either to remove the unnecessary parts, or to add them, no?
"Cleave" is to both adhere to and to split part.

And then there's that deliberately misappropriaiting words to eman their opposite, the better to cause obfuscation to ones elders, ones richers or ones sociallyadvantagedbydintofbirthorracers...

"Bad" means better than good and "sick" is  a gamer o fanboys highest compliment.

But what about "janky"?

Compliment or pejorative?

I am so old.

No comments: