CONTRADICTORY MEANINGS.
Among the curious phenomena of language one of the most singular is the use of the same word in two distinct senses, directly opposed to each other. Ideas are associated in the mind not only by resemblance but by contrast; and thus the same root, slightly modified, may express the most opposite meanings. A striking example of this, is the word “fast,” which is full of contradictory meanings. A clock is called “fast,” when it goes too quickly; but a man is told to stand “fast,” when he is desired to stand still. Men “fast” when they have nothing to eat; and they eat “fast” after a long abstinence. “Fast” men, as we have already seen, are apt to be very “loose” in their habits. When “fast” is used in the sense of “abstinence,” the idea may be, as in the Latin, abstineo, holding back from food; or the word may come from the Gothic, fastan, “to keep” or “observe,”—that is, the ordinance of the church. The verb “to overlook” is used in two contradictory senses; as, he overlooked the men at work, he overlooked the error.
The word “nervous” may mean either possessing or wanting nerve. A “nervous” writer is one who has force and energy; a “nervous” man is one who is weak, sensitive to trifles, easily excited. The word “post,” from the Latin positum, placed, is used in the most various senses. We speak of a “post”-office, of “post”-haste, of “post”-horses, and of “post”-ing a ledger. The contradiction in these meanings is more apparent than real. The idea of “placing” is common to them all. Before the invention of railways, letters were transmitted from place to place (or post to post) by relays of horses stationed at intervals so that no delay might occur. The “post”-office used this means of communication, and the horses were said to travel “post”-haste. To “post” a ledger is to place or register its several items.
The word “to let” generally means to permit; but in the Bible, in Shakespeare, and in legal phraseology, it often has the very opposite meaning. Thus Hamlet says, “I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me,” that is, interferes with or obstructs me; and in law books “without let or hindrance” is a phrase of frequent occurrence. It should be remarked, however, that “to let,” in the first sense, is from the Saxon, laetan; in the second, from letjan. The word “to cleave” may mean either to adhere to closely, as when Cowper says, “Sophistry cleaves close and protects sin’s rotten trunk”; or it may mean to split or to rend asunder, as in the sentence, “He cleaved the stick at one blow.” According to Mätzner, the word in the first sense is from the Anglo-Saxon, cleofan, clufan; in the last sense, it is from clifan, clifian. The word “dear” has the two meanings of “prized” because you have it, and “expensive” because you want it. The word “lee” has very different acceptations in “lee”-side and “lee”-shore.
The word “mistaken” has quite opposite meanings. “You are mistaken” may mean “You mistake,” or “You are misunderstood,” or “taken for somebody else.” In the line
“Mistaken souls that dream of heaven,”
in a popular hymn, the word is used, of course, in the former sense. The adjective “mortal” means both “deadly” and “liable to death.” Of the large number of adjectives ending in “able” or “ible,” some have a subjective and others an objective sense. A “terrible” sight is one that is able to inspire terror; but a “readable” book is one which you can read. It is said that the word “wit” is used in Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” with at least seven different meanings.
The prefixes “un” and “in” are equivocal. Commonly they have a negative force, as in “unnecessary,” “incomplete.” But sometimes, both in verbs and adjectives, they have a positive or intensive meaning, as in the words “intense,” “infatuated,” “invaluable.” To “invigorate” one’s physical system by exercise, is not to lessen, but to increase one’s energy. The verb “unloose” should, by analogy, signify “to tie,” just as “untie” means “to loose.” “Inhabitable” should signify “not habitable,” according to the most frequent use of “in.” To “unravel” means the same as “to ravel”; to “unrip” the same as “to rip.” Johnson sanctions the use of the negative prefix in these two words, but Richardson and Webster condemn it as superfluous. Walton, in his “Angler,” tells an amusing anecdote touching the two words. “We heard,” he says, “a high contention amongst the beggars, whether it was easiest to ‘rip’ a cloak or ‘unrip’ a cloak. One beggar affirmed it was all one; but that was denied, by asking her, if doing and undoing were all one. Then another said, ’twas easiest to unrip a cloak, for that was to let it alone; but she was answered by asking how she could unrip it, if she let it alone.”
This opposition in the meanings of a word is a phenomenon not altogether peculiar to the English language. In Greek, θοάζειν has the seemingly contradictory meanings of “to move hastily,” and “to sit”; χρεία means both “use” and “need”; and λάω means both “to wish” and “to take.” In Latin, sacer means “set apart” or “tabooed,” and unicus implies singularity,—unitas, association. Many other examples might be cited to show that “as rays of light may be reflected and refracted in all possible ways from the primary direction, so the meaning of a word may be deflected from its original bearing in a variety of manners; and consequently we cannot well reach the primitive force of the term unless we know the precise gradations through which it has gone.”
Several writers on our language have noticed a singular tendency to limit or narrow the signification of certain words, whose etymology would suggest a far wider application. Why should we not “retaliate” (that is, pay back in kind, res, talis) kindnesses as well as injuries? Why should we “resent” (feel again) insults, and not affectionate words and deeds? Why should our hate, animosity, hostility, and other bad passions, be “inveterate” (that is, gain strength by age), but our better feelings, love, kindness, charity, never? Byron showed a true appreciation of the better uses to which the word might be put, when he subscribed a letter to a friend, “Yours inveterately, Byron.”
In some of our nouns there is a nice distinction of meaning between the singular and the plural. A “minute” is a fraction of time; “minutes” are notes of a speech, conversation, etc. The “manner” in which a man enters a drawing-room may be unexceptionable, while his “manners” are very bad. When the “Confederates” threatened to pull down the American “colors” at New Orleans, they did it under “color” of right. A person was once asked whether a certain lawyer had got rich by his practice. “No,” was the sarcastic reply, “but by his practices.”