#janus word

[authormarialberg]

Day Three: The Cleaving Smell of Beauty's Ambition

The Cleaving Smell of Beauty's Ambition #poetry #photography #visualpoetry #NaPoWriMo

This is the first Sunday of the of the month, and there is no A to Z on Sundays, so today’s photo-challenge is a little different. I’ll be using the photos I took for Ambition and Beauty to create visual poems guided by a homograph. Cleave Cleave is an enticing word because it is both a homograph and a janus word. Cleave can mean to adhere, stick, or cling to, and be faithful. It can also mean…

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[theyuniversity]

What’s up with contronyms?

A word that has opposite meanings is called a contronym (also spelled contranym), an auto-antonym, or a Janus word.

Here are some contronyms:

To see a longer version of the above list (from fun-with-words), click here.

When you use an contronym in your writing, make sure that you provide your reader with enough context clues to figure out which of the two contradictory meanings you mean.

Otherwise, you’ll be like this scumbag:

Peruse can mean either “to examine carefully” or “to browse casually,” but the above sentence gives no indication of which definition is intended.

Therefore, provide enough context clues so that your intended meaning is clear:

In the second example, we can infer that someone who has set aside six hours to peruse an essay plans “to examine it carefully.” There is no longer any ambiguity.

Context is key. (Right, Jake?) 😧

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[theyuniversity]

Click here for more contronyms (aka contranyms, auto-antonyms, or Janus words).

[theyuniversity]

What's up with contronyms?

A word that means opposite things is called a contronym (also spelled contranym), an auto-antonym, or a Janus word.

Here are some contronyms:

To see a longer version of the above list (from fun-with-words), click here.

When you use an contronym in your writing, make sure that you provide your reader with enough context clues to figure out which of the two contradictory meanings you mean.

Otherwise, you’ll be like this scumbag:

Peruse can mean either “to examine carefully” or “to browse casually,” but the above sentence gives no indication of which definition is intended.

Therefore, provide enough context clues so that your intended meaning is clear:

In the second example, we can infer that someone who has set aside six hours to peruse an essay plans "to examine it carefully." There is no longer any ambiguity.

Context is key.