You are sleeping. The alarm goes off. You reach over and push the button to turn the alarm off.
Why is this sentence so confusing? It's because the word "off" is a contronym--a multiple-meaning word whose meanings are antonyms. In this sentence, the word off means at first to turn on, and then secondly to turn off. Who can stand that kind of confusion so early in the morning?
I stumbled upon contronyms when reading the wall post of one of my friends on Facebook. Quoting her teenage son, she wrote, "Antonym slang is just confusing." Having no clue what antonym slang is, I googled around and found something close--a listing for contronyms, or words that are their own antonyms.
For example, the word clip can mean detach and also fasten.
She clipped coupons out of the newspaper. Then she clipped them together with a paper clip.
dust: to add fine particles; to remove fine particles
He dusted the cake with a fine coat of chocolate powder. Then he dusted the powder off the kitchen counter.
sanction: approval, punishment
The school sanctions the sale of condoms in restrooms.
Good luck on this one, and please choose the correct definition.
Certainly, many of these contronyms are part of idiomatic expressions, like "go off" from the alarm clock example above. The word strike means to hit, but it also means to miss when you use the baseball term strike out. When put together with the word out, the meaning of the word strike changes. In some ways when the contronym is part of an idiomatic expression, it's even more confusing. Imagine trying to learn English and coming to this sentence:
When we tried to convince him to go to the party, we struck out.
You look up the word struck, which is tricky itself because it's an irregular verb. Then you find it means to hit. The word out means away from. So struck out means hit away from. Poor guy--his friends want him to go to the party so badly that they're willing to hit him. Luckily for him, they missed. Hmmm....I bet all those ballplayers who strike out wish they they were hitting that ball away from home plate.
There are zillions of reasons (at least 14) why I'm happy to be a native English speaker--contronyms is just one of them. It's the bomb.*
* bomb: a failure; a success
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