two contranyms

2025-08-16

in a mini-post i noted that words often take on their opposites.

of course, i am not the first person to observe this. this phenomenon has been identified by linguists under several terms:

Contronym

When a term has two opposite meanings, also called enantiosemy, enantionymy, antilogy or autoantonymy; also called a Janus word.

Skunked term

When it’s difficult to use a phrase because its use is currently evolving.

“skunking” happens all the time, actually, once you notice it. what is a “steep” learning curve and how does it differ from a “shallow” one? does it differ, actually?

but i think the linked wikipedia articles are actually quite out of date. all understandable because of how wikipedia works though because wikipedia needs authoritative sources. plus, wikipedia articles are meant to be summaries and not primary sources.

wikitionary has a lot more on their list of english contranyms.

speaking as a totally non-authoritative source though, it sure feels like there’s been more and more of these pop up recently! i can think of some off of the top of my head:

performative and nonperformative

i touched on this in my minipost but a “performative” statement, as defined originally by j.l. austin, is something you say as part of doing an action (or performing it). for example, if i say “I’m sorry,” that’s a performative statement because my apology contains that expression, my statement of contrition—at least in part. later it was picked up by judith butler when they described the performativity of gender: that is, one’s gender is constructed by what one does, as opposed to being defined by any sort of external taxonomy.¹ but is that what you think of when you encounter the term in popular parlance? because the more popular usage of performative outside of academic contexts is what academics would call non-performative: saying something just for the act of saying it. the instagram black square? “performative” activism. the influencer’s notes-app screenshot post? a “performative” apology! ² dan hirschman claims that this trend has occurred over the past ten years, and i will be bolder and say it has broadly occurred over the past five.

the two definitions of yak shaving³

according to eric s raymond, yak shaving is when solving a problem, you undertake an activity that seems pointless at first, but later turns out to be crucial in solving your original problem. contrast that with seth godin’s definition which seems to describe yak shaving as undertaking a series of pointless activities that balloon far past your original task. to me, these feel contradictory, no, both in their directionality (pointlessness leads to solving; solving leads to pointlessness) and in their sentiment (yak shaving is serendipitous; yak shaving is fruitless). (it’s worth noting that eric s raymond is a giant piece of shit and a homophobe, which is too bad because honestly i prefer his definition of yak-shaving.)