Қарсы мағыналы сөздер

Word that has two opposing meanings

A contronym, contranym or autantonym is a word with two meanings that are opposite each other. For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This feature is also called enantiosemy, enantionymy (enantio means "opposite"), antilogy or autantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.

The Korean noun 앞(ap) may mean either "future" or "past" (distinguished by context).

The German verb ausleihen, the Dutch verb lenen, the Polish verb pożyczyć, the Russian verb одолжить (odolžítʹ), the Finnish verb lainata, and the Esperanto verb prunti 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 German verb umfahren can either mean "to drive around" or "to run over". Both variants are distinguished by stress, though. The Romanian verb a închiria, the French verb louer, the Finnish verb vuokrata and the Spanish alquilar mean "to rent" (as the lessee does) as well as "to let" (as the lessor does). The Swahili verb kutoa means both "to remove" and "to add". The Chinese word "大败", it means both "be defeated" and "to defeat". The Persian verb چیدن (čidan) means both "to pluck" and "to arrange" (i. e. by putting objects down). In Spanish dar (basic meaning "to give"), when applied to lessons or subjects, can mean "to teach", "to take classes" or "to recite", depending on the context. Similarly with the French verb apprendre, which usually means "to learn" but may refer to the action of teaching someone. Dutch leren can mean "to teach" or "to learn". The Indonesian verbs menghiraukan and mengacuhkan can mean "to regard" or "to ignore". The Indonesian/Malay adjective usah can mean "required" or "discouraged" (disambiguated by the use of tidak or tak "don't").

The Italian, Spanish and French cognates (respectively) ospite, huésped and hôte can mean "host" or "guest". The three words derive from the Latin hospes, which also carries both meanings.

The Latin sinister meant both "auspicious" and "inauspicious", within the respective Roman and Greek traditions of augury. The negative meaning was carried on into French and ultimately English. Latin means "excessive, too much". It maintained this meaning in Spanish nimio, but it was also misinterpreted as "insignificant, without importance". In Vietnamese, means among other things "bright, clear" (from Sino Vietnamese 明) and "dead, gloomy" (from 冥). Because of this, the name of the dwarf planet Pluto is not adapted from as in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Spanish dichoso meant originally "blissful, fortunate" as in tierra dichosa, "fortunate land". However it developed an ironic and colloquial meaning "bothersome, unlucky", as in ¡Dichosas moscas!, "Damned flies! ".

Seeming contronyms can arise from translation. In Hawaiian, for example, aloha is translated both as "hello" and as "goodbye", but the essential meaning of the word is "love", whether used as a greeting or farewell. Similarly, 안녕 (annyeong) in Korean can mean both "hello" and "goodbye" but the central meaning is "peace". The Italian greeting ciao is translated as "hello" or "goodbye" depending on the context; the original meaning was "at your service" (literally "(I'm your) slave").