Someone recently asked me if I could explain the meaning of the word "sanction." With a groany little sigh, I responded, "Well, the noun 'sanction' means 'a coercive measure to restrict something' but it can also mean 'official permission to do something.'" I bravely continued: "So the verb 'sanction' can mean either 'to penalize' or 'to approve.'" I wasn't at all surprised to be sarcastically told, "Gee, thanks, that really clears it up."
Sorry, but that's about as clear as it gets. "Sanction" is just one of those twisted words in our language that have two meanings that are opposite. Not just different meanings (as for an organ, which could be a musical instrument or a part of the body), but opposite meanings. This phenomenon goes by a variety of names, including "auto-antonym" (aptly describing the word as an opposite of itself) and "Janus word" (an allusion to the two-faced Roman god).
It's a bit of a linguistic cruelty if you ask me. As if we need any more reasons not to understand each other. As relatively uncommon as the auto-antonym is, "sanction" is far from the only familiar term that belongs to this wily little family. Some are very much everyday words, and their opposite meanings may surprise you -- not that you're unfamiliar with their meanings, but that you may not have thought about them as being auto-antonyms. Let's see:
If you were told to dust the room ("remove particles from the room"), you might use a can of Pledge and a rag, but if it were your sergeant telling you to dust the room for fingerprints ("cover the room with particles"), you had better hope you didn't break out the Pledge.
When you weather storms, you endure them, you survive them. When the storms weather an embankment, they erode it, they destroy it. You could use a barrette to clip your hair to hold it in place, or you could use scissors to clip your hair to make it fall off.
To express relief, you could say, "The hard part's over. It's all downhill now." To express dismay, you could say, "My youth is over. It's all downhill now." To give favorable attention, you could patronize your local businesses. To give unfavorable attention, you could patronize your inferiors.
In spring we seed the pumpkin patch (we plant the seeds), and in fall we seed the pumpkins (we remove the seeds). A turtle is a shelled creature (with a shell), which would probably eat a shelled pistachio (without a shell).
You say your horse is fast, but is that because he runs like the wind or because he's tied to the fence and doesn't run at all? When the doctor fixes you, you're glad to be fully functioning again ... unless you are a dog, because if the doctor fixes you, you'll never be fully functioning again!
When the lights go off, they're obviously not on, but when a siren goes off, isn't it on? When the lights are out, they emit no light, but when the stars are out, they fill the sky with light. Presently (right this moment) the lights in my house are out, but it's almost sunset, so presently (before long; later) they will be turned on.
It would seem, given these illustrative examples, that we use auto-antonyms all the time, and they generally don't give us much reason to be confused. In fact, probably the single-most troublesome so-called Janus word is the instigator of this whole discussion: sanction. If you were to read, "The agency has decided that the earlier sanctions are appropriate," would you know for sure if these sanctions referred to denial rather than approval? Me neither.
Edmeston resident Christine A. Lindberg, senior U.S. lexicographer for Oxford University Press, is the principal content editor of Oxford's American English dictionaries and thesauruses. Opinions expressed by Lindberg in this column are done so independently, and do not necessarily reflect the policies and practices of Oxford University Press. Have a question or comment relating to the English language? E-mail: languagewithlindberg@gmail.com. Selected submissions will be answered here periodically.
Let's Look At The Language
I wonder if ancient Romans ever put sanctions on that two-faced Janus
- Let's Look At The Language
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'We'll take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne'
By Christine A. Lindberg A song that "owns" a particular day of the year is rare.
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Here comes Santa Claus ... where'd he get that snazzy red suit?
Years ago, I had a book of letters written to Santa Claus, and I remember that, among all the messages of "bring me this," "bring me that," and "I'll leave you a plate of cookies," one little boy had written, "Dear Santa, Where did you get your snazzy red suit?" I wouldn't be surprised if the author of that question grew up to be either a reporter or a fashion consultant, but in any event, I hope he got an answer to his question.
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Where do I plug in these Electric Prunes?
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The sometimes-cryptic language of company names
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What will my dream-doctor say about this orgledream in my head?
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"Our state fair is a great state fair! Don't miss it, don't even be late. It's dollars to doughnuts that our state fair is the best state fair in our state!"
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Like gods on the heptagram, so are the days of our week
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'Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?' just not the same
When the Baltimore Orioles' third baseman took the field on May 30, 1982, not even Nostradamus could have foreseen that one of the most celebrated streaks in baseball was beginning at that very moment. The player was Cal Ripken Jr., whose 2,131st consecutive game on Sept. 6, 1995, surpassed Lou Gehrig's "unsurpassable" record.
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A frabjous Fourth of July to everyone!
If there's one date in history that every American can cite, it's the day that the Continental Congress gave its nod to the Declaration of Independence: July 4, 1776.
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June is bustin' out all over!
When "Carousel," the second stage musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945, the audience left the theater in buoyant spirits.
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Go ahead and have a rat on a stick, but please don't call it a lollipop
I recent read that this Tuesday is National Escargot Day. I was unable to find any compelling evidence that this is an official national day for any nation in particular, but it does seem that throughout the U.K. and North America, French restaurants have happily adopted the day as a time to celebrate their garlicky little mollusks.
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Onomatopoeic power of wheatgrass souffle
“The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named” is the New Oxford American Dictionary’s definition of “onomatopoeia” (Ah-Nuh-mah-tuh-PEE-uh).
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The language of Benjamin Franklin, in whatever name he used
When Benjamin Franklin died 221 years ago this month, the entire Western world mourned, yet his gravestone reads (in full), “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin 1790.”
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There's nothing like a good spoonerism to tickle a bunny phone
The English economist Sir Roy Forbes Harrod (1900"1978) once said that, compared to all the scholars he had known at Oxford and Cambridge, the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844"1930) was the most exceptional in "scholarship, devotion to duty, and wisdom." There is no reason to question Harrod's assessment, but that's not exactly the imprint by which Spooner is best remembered.
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'We'll take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne'
