Pertinent to demonyms: A friend of mine from Crete, Illinois once complained that he was doomed for life because as long as he lived in Crete he would be a Cretin, but if he ever left he'd be an excretian.
Inhabitants of the island of Crete are known as Cretans. I’m not sure what I should read into the fact that the ones in Illinois chose to refer to themselves as Cretins! 😂
@@langdalepaul The States have a lot of places with borrowed names as well as funny/quirky ones. :) There's several Spartas, a few Hells, a Satan's Kingdom...
My favorite contronym is "pitch" because it's a double contronym. It can mean to actively promote or advocate for (pitch a new product), or it can mean to discard (pitch it in the bin). It can also mean a level surface (the players coming out on the pitch), or a steep incline (the roofer charged extra due to the pitch of my roof).
@@wiseSYW Black as pitch, since you can't say 'black as tar-baby' anymore. Does anyone call tar pitch anymore? Pitchers used to pitch balls to batters with pitch on their bat handles on a baseball pitch. I imagine a revised "Who's on first" routine where the batter is John Woo and the pitcher is pitching woo.
@@fsinjin60 Aah! You just brought to mind that classic cricket commentary, when the commentator said "The bowler's Holding, the batman's Willey". He was, of course, referring to Michael Holding and Peter Willey as the bowler and batsman, respectively. The funniest part was when he realised what he had said and could hardly continue his commentary, because he was laughing so much. I know - a complete tangent, but worth remembering.
Another contronym would be "off," at least where I am in the states. My dad used to work for an alarm company, and he installed a burglar alarm for a convenience store that was owned by an Asian man who was not a native English speaker. My dad got the alarm installed and was telling this man how it worked. He said that if someone broke in the "alarm would go off." The man looked at him and said, "I don't want it to go off, I want it to go on."
Kind of, but not exactly, I think. ‘Turn off’ and ‘go off’ are antonyms, but they’re not the same verb. The adverbs ‘off’ within those verbs are antonyms, but the ‘off’ in ‘go off’ only has the meaning of active when in the context of the verb ‘go off’, it never has that meaning as an independent adverb.
@@mrosskne But "go off" can also mean "turn off" in certain contexts. If you say, "that light will go off if you flip that switch," it means the same if you use "turn off" instead.
I am currently tracking the American abandonment of prepositions which may be funky but is degrading the language. In contradition, we have new superfluous prepositions such as 'hate on.' My lastest irritation is 'lived experience' since I cannot work out what an 'unlived experience' would be.
Regarding retronyms, there's a wonderful moment at the end of a Doctor Who episode where a companion for that episode only, who was picked up from the battlefields of the Great War, is returned to where he came from, and wished the best of luck by the Doctor "out there in World War One". And as the Doctor turns to leave, the man sadly asks him, "...One?"
As a sewist, one of my favourite contronyms is the verb "trim": it can mean to remove small amounts from the edges to tidy them, or to add ornamentation (possibly made from the trimmings - which is itself a contronym!)
Those have fallen out of favor within sewing comunities I have been a part of - partly because seamster feels odd and not wanting the default to be feminine as well as having a gender neutral option is nice. Partly because a seamstress is just someone who sews which was in contradiction to someone who designs/cuts cloth/fits clothes. Sewist is just the word that gets commonly used.
@@Meeptome so you’re saying that seamster/seamstress implies just someone who sews, but sewist doesn’t? 😂 Don’t worry, I get it, it’s just more gender neutral bullshit. Etymologists of the future are going to have a field day with the early 21st century. The Middle Ages had The Great Vowel Shift. We’ve got The Great Gender Shift. 🙄
@@KT-dj4iy Recalling Strunk & White's _Elements of Style_ (4th Edition, IIRC), the issue is that people misunderstand "inflammable" as, well, non-ignitable or incapable of sustaining a flame (when, in fact, it means the opposite) and then backcoin "flammable" to mean, well, inflammable.
@@webwarren right, I get that. I was simply saying that in the midst of discussions like this, while I've heard people speak of, "flammable" (it can be burned); "inflammable" (it, too, can be burned); and "non-flammable" (it cannot be burned), I have never, until now, heard anyone mention "non-inflammable". Now logic would suggest that being, in appearance at least, the negation of inflammable, "non-inflammable" would mean "not inflammable"; i.e. it cannot be burned. But since we're already dealing with the fact that in "inflammable", the supposed negating "in" is no such thing, then we have to accept that logic is in the corner, cowering and confused, and so there's really no way to tell what "non-inflammable" would mean, even if it were in common use. Maybe it's just a bit of flimflam, to render an already-confused situation even more flimsy. I was going to add "ba-dum-tish" after that, but I've been told, by ChatGPT, that "ba-dum-tish" is not a good representation of the drummer's flam, no matter how flamboyant, as I'd hoped it was.
Holy crap, a comments section that is a joy to read. I learned as much here as in the episode. I normally watch on tv so i dont see the comments. Didnt think there would be this much that would actually make reading comments worth my time. Freaking great job all.
I'm surprised they didn't mention 'Victorian' which could mean of the era in the 19th century or it could mean a person from Victoria (in Australia). Or indeed "Georgian' which could mean something from a specific period of history, or it could mean someone from the country of Georgia. But somehow we get by :-D
Now that reminds me. The best aptronym of all has to be Thomas Crapper, a businessman who invented a number of plumbing fixtures for the bathroom in the 19th century. Contrary to myth, "crap" and "crapping" are NOT named after him. The fact that he invented many bathroom fixtures is just a coincidence.
Rob noted "screen" can mean to hide something from view but in the case of a film, it means to show it off. Interestingly, it has a third meaning in between hiding and showing off, which is to filter something, as in screening passengers through a security checkpoint. So if you are using a Japanese screen, you can hide something, if you are using a silver screen, you can show something, but if you are using a permeable sieve type of screen, you are letting some things through and holding back other things.
As the late great author Terry Pratchett once wrote: “Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror."
"The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad."
In German, you have the expression "jemanden umfahren". If you stress umfahren on the first syllable, it means to run over somebody (with a vehicle). If you stress on the second syllable, it means to drive around somebody (to avoid hitting them).
In German I found it unhelpful that the female form of ‘the’ is the same as the plural form. My brother and I were referred to as ‘die Boys ‘ but I always protested saying ‘der Boys’.
I love how expressive Jess’s face is. Watching her listen to Rob & react to what he says is fun. He’s very British, understated, in his reactions. More muted/toned down but you can still see that he is reacting. Whereas Jess’s face is seldom still, lights up when intrigued, & just very mobile in a positive manner. As to names: I knew a man named Bob Shishka. He hated it when people Shishka Bob(bed) him.
Lewis Carrol had some fun with fast as a contronym. The White Knight described being stuck in his helmet - stuck “fast as lightning.” Alice replied “but that’s a different kind of fastness.” To which the night replied “it was all kinds of fastness to me.”
A very specific and short lived aptronym, occurred in 2021, when the BBC sent one of their journalists to a petrol station to give a report on petrol shortages during the fuel crisis. His name is Phil McCann
A woman I worked with had an aptonym. She was in charge of renting out airplanes, and her name was Lisa Plane. So, if you wanted to lease a plane, go see Lisa Plane.
I knew an Anglican minister named Reverend Good. An acquaintance shared a hilarious story about a gentleman who worked at a tree nursery named Forest Greene 😂. She had called the nursery but couldn’t stop laughing to tell him what she was looking for.
Similarly, in the game, The Last of Us, a character says, "Flashlights out," as a group of people is going into a sewer system. I think fully half of the players I've watched have misinterpreted that statement.
If the alarm was turned off, that means someone stopped it, which does not fit well with "the alarm went off". However if the alarm stops of it's own accord that would definitely mean that "the alarm went off" which is a contranym :)
I first heard this quip from a first speaker of German: When a subsistence farmer was asked what they did with their crops, he replied, " We eat what we can, and what we can't we can."
@@lorraineliggera4229 No. Originally all steel cans used to preserve food were coated with Tin to avoid oxidation. Today many have a very thin plastic liner instead of Tin, as do Aluminium cans for carbonated beverages. So they were Tinned cans which got shortened to Tin. They were never exclusively made from Tin
@@derekmills5394 Also the earliest cans were soldered shut with lead/tin solder and the process of soldering can be referred to as "tinning". I have no evidence that that affected the development of the term tin can, but hey, corrupted etymology is an English tradition.
Given a US citizen and a British speaker of English talking about antonyms, I was surprised at the omission of "endorse." In the UK it means to put negative points on a driving license, as well as to recommend something. The comedian Jasper Carrot told a story, a long time ago, about being stopped by a traffic cop in LA who asked to see Carrot's license. The cop saw Carrot's UK license had several endorsements and was very impressed, assuming it meant the equivalent of praise. Had the word been "citation" however, the cop would have known how to interpret than antonym too, which can mean "being cited for some infraction and therefore liable to some punishment" or it can mean "being recognized for some act of courage or outstanding effort as per "captain Wallace received the Presidential citation for his actions during the battle of Kandahar, when his prompt thinking saved the lives of his platoon."
My younger middle child has recently got their learners permit. They have endorsements & the DMV worker referred to them as both endorsements & restrictions. They used like 5 different words when referring to the endorsements actually. They have one for having a hypoplastic optic nerve in one eye, for being visually limited/needing glasses in the other, another for one of their mental health diagnosis, & one that requires them to have a side mirror on the drivers side specifically (I hadn’t realized that side view mirrors can be prescriptive & be a requirement on a specific side or on both) as I wasn’t the one that took the older two to get their licenses/permits. I need to check the older kids’ licenses now.
Between the Nordic languages we have some words like that too. Danish "tilbud" means "discount", while the seemingly same word in Swedish - "tillbud" means "(very serious) accident, sickness" etc. And also between the Nordic languages and English, example: "kvinna" - older spelling and once also older pronunciation "quinna" - is cognate with English "queen" but simply means "woman". "Mat" and "meat" are cognates too, but "mat" is food in general. It's the other way around with "fläsk", cognate with "flesh" but means "pork meat" only or sometimes used vulgar/urban as "fat" as in obesity. "Rör på fläsket!" is about the Swedish equivalent of English "Move your fat ass!"
A contronym that was part of 1970's slang: 'bad'. My older brother (a musician) was with his girlfriend (an editor at Allen and Unwin who had studied under J.R.R. Tolkien) visiting his alma mater in California, when a musician he knew ran into them. The guy was super excited about a recording session he'd been in, and exclaimed "It was bad! Man, it was soo bad!" And throughout, my brother was happy for the guy and kept saying things like, "That's great! Awesome!" His girlfriend was thoroughly confused until he mentioned, "You know -- 'bad' means 'good'." Her response? "Americans will be the death of English!"
My children back-formed from hoover and used to talk about hooving rather than hoovering. Which makes complete sense. They also came up with "stepth" instead of steepness because of course we have depth rather than deepness
Isn't that just an extension of bound? Meaning both something which is distant from but for which it is destined, or something rigidly adhered to something else so that it is indistinguishable from being once separated. Earth being the subject of an object for which it may be bound.
@@tessabrisac7423 A cute (dare I say, Rob-like) rodent from Western Australia, which look like they are smiling when they get selfies taken with visiting celebrities. Google tennis great "Roger Federer quokka" for a famous example.
@@tessabrisac7423 It's a marsupial that lives in only a few parts of Australia. From Wikipedia: "Although looking rather like a very small kangaroo, it can climb small trees and shrubs up to 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in). Its coarse fur is a grizzled brown colour, fading to buff underneath." Can't speak to the accuracy of OP's comparison as I'm blind, but it made me laugh. You don't hear about quokkas much.
I only today discovered your channel and have subscribed. I love your project and will be a regular viewer. For many years I have been interested in languages, why we say things the way we do. My personal favourites are phrases and proverbs: - "Bob's your uncle" in English - "to make blue" or "to be blue" in German - "Don't make a goat your gardener" German "Don't make the wolf your shepherd" French "Don't put a fox in charge of the henhouse" English "Dont' give a thief the key to your house" Chinese
In an early meeting of British and American military leaders in World War, the British wanted to table an idea and the Americans objected. It took them a significant amount of discussion to realize both sides wanted the same thing.
My understanding of the origins of the difference is that: in Congress, the table is behind the speaker where the paper is out of sight and in Parliament, the table is in the centre of the room where the document can be referred to. Whether or not this is the true origin, it is an easy way to remember the difference.
@@TedLittle-yp7uj and also in UK english when an agenda item is to be put aside it is 'shelved' - is that not the same in US english? The shelves being where you store things that you don't need right now.
Apparently the etymology of “plaster” is as follows: The word "plaster," as used in the UK to refer to what is known in the US as a "band-aid," has its roots in the Latin word *emplastrum*, which means "a plaster" or "a salve." This Latin term itself is derived from the Greek word *emplastron*, which referred to a plaster or ointment applied to wounds. The Greek *emplastron* is related to the verb *emplassein*, meaning "to daub on" or "to plaster." In Middle English, the term evolved into *plastre*, which referred to a medicinal preparation applied to the body. Over time, the meaning expanded to include not just the medicinal paste or ointment, but also the material (often cloth) used to cover and protect wounds. By the time the term entered the modern English language, it had come to refer to both the material and the practice of covering a wound, hence its use today in the UK to refer to a small adhesive bandage used to cover minor cuts or injuries. So, in summary: - **Greek**: *Emplastron* (a plaster, ointment) - **Latin**: *Emplastrum* (a plaster, salve) - **Middle English**: *Plastre* (medicinal preparation) - **Modern English**: "Plaster" (UK usage for adhesive bandage)
@@jdhenge It isn't common, but it has been recorded since at least the 1940s. Compare Mencken's "Names for Americans" (1947), quote: "The chief objection to Michigander is that it inspires idiots to call a Michigan woman a Michigoose and a child a Michigosling, but the people of the State have got used to this."
I loved learning about cleave! I was tickled when I realized “hew” and “cleave” are each contronyms, and (because they mean the same things) synonyms/antonyms to each other.
Contronym! Now I know what to call the word inhabitable! If a place can be lived in, it is habitable. If it is not liveable, it's uninhabitable. Inhabitable can mean either that the place is not habitable or that it can be inhabited.
Hi! Aussie here. Our Newcastle residents are called Novocastrians... similarly Newcastle here is known for coal mining and used to be known for steel works.
"literally" is one of the more frustrating contronyms for me. Because people used it so often in a hyperbolic manner, "literally" now means both to be taken at its face value and to be taken figuratively
"Literally" is not a contronym because it doesn't also *mean* "figuratively", it can just be *used* in a figurative way as an intensifier. I've seen this mistake implied when someone hypercorrected and said "figuratively" in a place where one might use "literally" in a figurative way, but where what they were speaking of was not as they said in any figurative way. The specific example that comes to mind is someone said that somebody had "figuratively the highest grade in the class", and I asked what their high grade was figurative of, and they were confused for a moment before explaining that they just meant it wasn't *literally* the *highest* grade in the class, it was just a very high grade. It would have been better if they had just used "literally" in a figurative way instead of saying "figuratively" in a nonsensical way.
@@Pfhorrest webster's defitinion: : in effect : virtually -used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible am i mistaken? legit asking: isnt this definition the opposite meaning of the traditional definition of"literally"? further down in Webster it does say "its meaning is not quite identical to that of figuratively ('with a meaning that is metaphorical rather than literal')." but i think its last definition is still opposite to its original use
@@blaictsomh I think the difference here is that between "contrary" and "contradictory". The hyperbolic (and thus figurative) usage of "literally" is contrary to its original (literal) usage, but not contradictory, it doesn't literally mean "not literally" as "figuratively" does, it just doesn't literally mean "literally" either. ~F(x) vs F(~x) if you'll indulge the formality.
Further to @Pfhorrest's comments, using "literally" as an intensifier in this way goes back to the 1600's. It's not a new "mistake". And it was considered perfectly literary until the 1800's, when many literary scholars became overly pedantic about presumed "mistakes" and tried to discourage many previously common English practices. (Same with double negatives (eg, "ain't nothing"), which had centuries of accepted use as negative-intensifiers, before being shunned as "uneducated".)
@@Pfhorrest so does that categorize this as a contronym or no? and if not, what does it mean to be the opposite of literally? or what is the contradiction to literally?
I believe this episode actually contains a folk etymology, Jess says ‘onomatopoetic’ while Rob uses ‘onomatopoeic’. I personally prefer to use the same one as Jess, purely because it’s more fun, even if it may not be more original or accurate. I also fear RobWords is an inaptronym as he spends far more time giving out words than stealing them off folk
On one of the 2,000 Year Old Man records Mel Brooks says things were named from "onomatopoetica". He cites, for example, "shower" as coming from opening the hot water tap too much, so the resulting sound is: Shhhh... Ow!!!! Thus, it is a shhh-ow-er.
I'm glad you caught that! It is more usual to see onomatopoeic, but I maintain that both are correct because its back half is from the Greep poein, meaning "to make, create, compose"-the same source as "poem," "poet" and "poetic." And like you, I prefer the way "onomatopoetic" rolls off the tongue. - Jess
With recent usage, DROP is a contranym. As in "Rob and Jess dropped a video" could mean they put a new one on TH-cam, or conceivably that they took one off. I also wanted to note that "get stuck in" is one of my favorite British English terms that I've never heard here in the US.
It’s also interesting in American English how the verbs “to be up for something” and “to be down for something” have the same meaning. “You up for some pizza?” “Yeah, I’m down.”
Can't believe "deceptively" wasn't mentioned! One of my favorite contranyms. If a body of water is "deceptively shallow," does that mean it looks deep but is in fact shallow, or that it's actually much deeper than it appears? Love the show, guys
I don't see how you derive those two - deceptively shallow to me only means "looks shallow but isn't". Now "deceptively deep" is more easily taken two ways: looks deep but isn't or looks a certain depth but is actually deeper.
That’s pretty good. I’d say if it’s shallow, it’s shallow. If one is deceived about its shallowness , that means it appears deeper than it is. But requires mental acrobatics
Weirdly the deep v shallow example seems, at least to me, ambiguous but easy v hard doesn't. A deceptively easy puzzle looks like it will be complicated but is easy whereas a deceptively hard puzzle looks like it will but straight forward but isn't.
@@wheresmyoldaccount Yes, it seems quite contextual. Also, if you add in a word like looks, seems, appears, etc then you may change the meaning. "The puzzle is deceptively hard" vs "the puzzle appears deceptively hard." They suggest opposite meanings to me. It's a very ambiguous adverb!
I just had a contranym show up minutes ago from my wife, and I really didn't know which version she meant. She had some plans that she was going to do today, but was taking some time at her computer to check emails, news, and watch a show, and then was going to get to her plans. I just checked in on her and she said, "I'm all caught up." At first I thought she meant that she had completed all of her computer tasks -- emails, news, etc. -- and was now free to go do her tasks. "Caught up" meaning that she has no more computer tasks to do and is free to move on with her day. What she actually meant was that she was "caught up" in the storyline of the show and couldn't stop binge watching it. She was "caught up" meaning "ensnared" like in a fishing net, and was NOT free to move on with her day.
The professor told his class that negatives used once or twice might still be negative, but in no language would consecutive positives be negative. A student up the front muttered “yeah, right.”
The use of "table" to mean put aside is interesting. In the UK, we would "shelve" it. Put it on a shelf for later. I think I prefer that because tables are generally items that are in daily use, but a shelf is a storage place used less often.
in the US people will say "shelve" to mean setting it aside indefinitely rather than temporarily. usually because they want to get to the thing at some point, but lack the means. sort of like an inventor working on a project but lacking the tech to make it a reality. the project will be "shelved" rather than completely discarded, with the intention of returning to it eventually.
The interesting thing to me is that both usages (put aside to come back to later and put aside more or less permanently) both come from parliamentary procedure. I don't know when Americans started using motions to table as a means of setting something aside permanently rather than just temporarily.
@@rmdodsonbills "tabling" something is *supposed* to be a temporary setting aside because other things take precedence, but people have started to use it somewhat passive-aggressively, because apparently outright saying "no" to someone is considered rude in the business world.
My favourite eponym is boycott, named after Captain Charles Boycott, a land owner who tried to evict people from his land. The people then refused to trade with him or work for him, and completely shunned him
I have just encountered this delightful channel, and have two aptronyms to contribute. When my family was in the process of moving to Houston in the 1960's, my father, who came before the rest of us, would tell us various bits about our new home-to-be. Two of his favorites were that someone named Tunnel was running for Railroad Commissioner, and the other, which is still very much alive today, was Earthman Funeral Homes.
Vel-Cro, the brand name commonly used to refer to "hook and loop" closures, is a shortened version of "Velour-Crochet" - "velour" for the loops and "crochet" for the hooks.
6:00 A Yorkshireman here: Fast as an adverb has to me always meant 'firmly' and when I saw a Kwik Fit garage sign proclaiming "Exhausts fitted fast" I was relieved as I didn't want my car exhaust system to drop off.
Yorkshire born, but grew up in Kent, so I'm familiar with the Yorkshire idea of fast. Similarly used in the south in expressions like "fast asleep" as in deeply, firmly, solidly, thoroughly, etc.
IT"S A TRAP! In addition to "The La Brea Tar Pits", which means "The The Tar Tar Pits", there's also The Los Angeles Angels = The The Angels Angels In traditional Hawaiian cooking, they would dig a pit in the ground and line it with rocks to cook in. Now referred to as a "kalua pit", which means "the pit pit". And there was even a restaurant in Hawaii (which might still exist) called "The Kalua Pit" = "The The Pit Pit". A city near Los Angeles called "Glendale" = "Valley Valley".
One of my favorite kinda-sorta-contronyms is “to determine”: It could mean either that “you _don’t know_ how something works, so you figure it out,” or it can mean “to define/establish/decree how something works meaning that you _do know_ how it works.”
There are a lot of tautonyms in Chinese because ancient Chinese used a lot of one syllable words and people were like "I'm sorry but can you repeat that?" and they did and now the repeated word has become the word. An example in English would be "Bye bye" for "Goodbye"
Interesting, @@Vic-Meow. In the Bantu-influenced varieties of English spoken in Africa, words are said twice to add emphasis or some other effect. There is, for instance, now, just now and now-now. If something is inexplicable it is said to have happened "somehow-somehow." If one is being idle they are said to be "there-there." "As if as if" is being affectatious .
Also, because in more modern chinese, a 'complete meaning' is generally indicated by 2-3 characters - so when the word by itself is already the complete meaning, some such words are repeated to indicate that it is complete. Sometimes, a synonym is used instead, and sometimes there's a generically related placeholder just to complete the pattern!
@@bluerendar2194Another consideration is rhythm. A sentence in Chinese sounds like "Dada dada dada dada". For example a lot of traditional sayings consist of four characters. That's another reason why so many words in Chinese are made up of two characters.
@@MusayeEmphasis in English would be like saying "I am very very happy". In Tagalog " I very much love you" is "Mahal na mahal kita" whereas "I love you" is "Mahal kita". I am not fluent in Tagalog but I think doubling adjectives and adverbs is common. I used to joke with my wife that the BBC is the "boring na boring channel". I think doubling an adjective in Chinese makes it an adverb so if you say "xiaoxin" it means "careful" but "xiaoxiao xinxin" would be "carefully".
Did you mention "Hoosier" for people from Indiana? Jess, I got your book (Hell) and am tearing through it. It's very fun! Just wanted to say both of you have such lovely smiles. A delight to both see and hear.
Not a demonym but it made me think of how people see or think of themselves. I once saw an advert for holidaying in Belgium and its selling point was 'We are slightly different' Still makes me smile when i think of it now.
I expected that on a podcast called Words Unravelled that when they discussed flammable and inflammable, they would have tackled ravel and unravel meaning the same thing.
I specifically chose this video out of the rest because it was double the length of most of the rest of them. I'd love to see so many more 50+ minute episodes.
Taser. Unbelievable. I believe it, but, still, unbelievable. Tom Swifties are quotations with an adverbial punchline, like "Put down that knife" he said sharply, or "Never put ice in my drink" he said coldly.
@@allendracabal0819 My dad and uncles used to sit around coming up with this type. The more absurd or disturbing the connection and the harder you had to think to get it the better.
I remember in the mid 60's Time Magaszine ran Swifties in one of their columns and our family would come up with our own over breakfast. Both parents were language professors.
Some other proprietary names are: Sheetrock for drywall Formica for high pressure laminate Skilsaw for portable circular saw Frisbee for a throwable plastic disc. Levi's for blue jeans
Aspirin for acetylsalicylic acid (Bayer AG's trademark, nullified in the Treaty of Versailles) Kleenex for facial tissue Xerox for dry-process photocopy Taser for an electric stun gun Escalator for moving stairway (Otis, the originator of the safety brake on modern elevators) Zamboni for an ice-rink resurfacer and so, so many more!
@@HayTatsuko Another proprietary name from Bayer AG that they would like to conveniently forget: Heroin - the trade name for their formulation of diacetylmorphine
Great video - thank you! Two contributions: 1. I used to live in central Illinois, about twenty miles south of a town by the name of Oglesby. The locals referred to the citizenry as Oglesbians...and most of the residents had the sense and good humor to embrace it. 2. Not original to our family, but we have three dogs and long ago abandoned both vacuuming and hoovering for the far more appropriate - in our life experience - barkuuming.
Though it is not a single word, the phrase "out-of-the-box" can also be seen as a contronym. An "out-of-the-box solution" refers to a pre-built or turn-key application that can be implemented in a standard way, something that came out of a box. While "out-of-the-box thinking" refers to creative non-standard ideas or design, a bespoke solution that is the opposite of pre-built. An idea that is outside of the pre-conceived box of what is possible.
Speaking of shelled pistachios, my sister's pet peeve is the expression seeded grapes. You will sometimes see this stand in contrast to seedless grapes. However, back when we were kids you couldn't get seedless grapes. Seeding the grapes meant removing the seeds. So seeded grapes were grapes with no seeds
When I was eight years old, I developed an interest in butterflies, and when I turned nine I was given a display case of specimens (that I was most proud of) on our living room wall. One day, a friend came to visit for afternoon tea, when I pointed to the display and exclaimed "Look - butterflies!". Upon which my friend, as a joke, picked up a handful of dairy spread from the table, hurled it at the display, and exclaimed "Look - Butter flies!". (This genuinely happened; fortunately the display wasn't damaged, and, 55 years later adorns the living room wall at my current abode.)
You guys are so good at this! Contrive is another word with a lot of flexibility depending upon how it's used. If you say something is contrived it might mean it is fake or unnatural ("his TH-cam comment seemed overly contrived"), but if you contrive to make something happen, it would be seen as a clever success ("RobWords and Jess Zaffaris contrived to make word nerding great again").
I have to credit Amelia Bedelia for these: dusting, pitted. My favorite contronym that I’d love to know the origins of is: “off” like the alarm went off (meaning it’s sounding) vs the alarm is off (it is not sounding)
@@WordsUnravelled I didn't yet think of there being types of words, but her dusting the furniture was probably the first contronym I encountered as a little word nerd. It also just ocured to me that maybe her name is Amelia as in ameliorate because shes always just trying to help.
However, it's pronounced differently (different stress) and the Grammar is different so there is hardly a situation where you could be confused as to which is actually meant.
@@raempftl Usually, yes. Although the written phrase "Ich würde diese Person auf der Straße gerne umfahren." is absolutly ambivalent in it's meaning as long as it's not spoken aloud.
@@raempftl Yes, there's hardly any way to make that one ambiguous within a proper sentence ("umgefahren" vs. "umfahren"; "fahre um" vs. "umfahre" etc). There are other examples from German that require very specific circumstances. "Ich trinke Bier in Maßen" (I drink beer in moderation) is my favourite. It only works when capitalized. Due to special rules applying to the ß (sharp S), it is turned into "ICH TRINKE BIER IN MASSEN", which means the opposite. Extra bonus for the fact that the original may also refer to drinking beer "one Maß at a time" (Maß being a large measure of beer).
That's a bit like in swedish "kör på". It can have three different meanings depending on how you apply stress to the two syllables. It literally translates to "drive on". If your stress the second word, "kör PÅ", then that's a traffic accident, you hit or bump into someone or something with your vehicle. If you stress both syllables equally it means you keep on driving (frequently used in a metaphorical sense, keeping on doing whatever you where doing). If you stress the first syllable "KÖR på" it means you are talking about driving on some kind of surface/tires/fuel to be specified earlier or later in the sentence, or is obvious by the specific circumstances of the conversation.
One of my favorite eponyms is mesmerize, named after Franz Mesmer. Its a fascinating one that surprised me with its continued use after the original origin has been largely forgotten.
"rent" is my most despised contronym. Even with the context of a whole sentence or two it can be impossible to tell which side of the renting is being referred to. "drop" is another bad one. I've been like "what? they decided against releasing that?" only to realize the meaning was that it had just released And I agree with Rob on irregardless. 1870 was "only" 150 years ago.
So rich, interesting, thought-provoking! This is the kind of thing the internet and social media ought to be brimming with. Thank you for making me think, and think about English words.
Here's some inaptronyms from Australia: former head of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was Ken Butcher. A doctor who worked at a hospital I worked at many years ago was Dr Butcher, and another was Dr Death (pronounced deeth, rhymes with teeth).
I knew a guy whose last name was Klutz. He insisted that it was of German origin and was pronounced "Clouse." I don't buy Death as Deeth anymore than I did that.
Many years ago I had a hand injury. I needed physical therapy and the doctor I went to was Dr. Grabb. A year or two later, my then husband had to have a wisdom tooth removed. The dentist who performed the extraction was Dr. Fear.
In 1979 the English band The Rumour released an LP with the delightfully exonymic rhyming title Frogs Sprouts Clogs And Krauts, referring successively to the French, Belgians, Dutch and Germans, by their successive characteristics of eating frogs, originating the vegetable Bussells Sprouts, wearing wooden shoes, and eating pickled cabbage called Sauerkraut.
There is an interesting pair of Demonyms in the German city of Jena. Historically, the inhabitants are called Jenenser, but in modern times many people use the typical forming rules and say Jenaer. Since lots of students come from all over Germany to attend the university in Jena, the new version is easily spread, which resulted in a split: People born in Jena are called Jenenser, while those who moved there (especially those who only live there temporarily) are Jenaer.
I was at a wildlife park with friends a couple of years ago looking at northern lynxes. One friend asked why the info board had lynx lynx lynx written on it, thinking it was enough to say it was a lynx once. I explained about binomials and trinomials and generic names, specific epithets and subspecific epithets. I'm rather pleased to learn the word tautonym today,
As a former Michigander I can confirm both yooper and troll are correct: yooper referring to the way upper pen people [mis]pronounce "upper" and troll because those in the lower pen "live under a [Mackinac] bridge" and both are semi-derogatory terms used mostly by inhabitants of one pen (or the other) to referring to members of the opposite pen
@@resourceress7 This is actually the other explanation I heard as a kid growing up. However, since I never heard anyone use "LPer/elper" (vs UPer/yooper) in all the years I lived there the reasoning I gave above is the one that resonated with me. Additionally, until I actually lived in the upper pen (went to college at MTU) I had never heard "troll": people in the lower pen definitely DO NOT refer to themselves collectively as trolls. As both terms are used in at least a semi-derogatory manner, as mentioned above, its is more likely the term was intended as a slight against a [different] pattern of speech than a reference to geographic location.
The bad things about English are what make it the best language in the world. As someone who speaks about 5 languages I feel there’s no language as awesome as English. The elegance of these rules being flaunted are so beautifully exploited bringing us joy
The contronym that always got to me on the news: if the government announces that violence is "sanctioned" in your area, you better find out which one they mean -- fast!
I'm a big fan of that poem where all the rhymes come from verbs that are improperly irregularized, can't remember the title but the last line has the classic contronym: "I had promised to cleave, and I've cleft".
"The Lovers" by Phoebe Cary Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught, And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher who praught, Though his enemies called him a screecher who straught. His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking and sunk, And his eye, meeting hers, began winking and wunk; While she, in her turn, kept thinking, and thunk. He hastened to woo her, and sweetly he wooed, For his love grew until to a mountain it grewed, And what he was longing to do then he doed. In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke, To seek with his lips what his heart long had soke; So he managed to let the truth leak, and it loke. He asked her to ride to the church, and they rode; They so sweetly did glide that they both thought they glode. And they came to the place to be tied, and were toed. Then homeward, he said, let us drive, and they drove, And as soon as they wished to arrive, they arrove, For whatever he couldn't contrive, she controved. The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole; At the feet where he wanted to kneel then he knole; And he said, "I feel better than ever I fole" So they to each other kept clinging, and clung, While Time his swift circuit was winging, and wung; And this was the thing he was bringing, and brung: The man Sally wanted to catch, and had caught; That she wanted from others to snatch, and had snaught; Was the one that she now like to scratch, and she scraught. And Charley's warm love began freezing, and froze, While he took to teazing, and cruelly toze The girl he had wished to be squeezing, and squoze. "Wretch!" he cried, when she threatened to leave him, and left, "How could you deceive me, and you have deceft?" And she answered, "I promised to cleave, and I've cleft."
"The Lovers" is by Phoebe Cary. Amos Keeter is a great poem too: Amos Keeter There's a lively little creeter which is known as Amos Keeter and it couldn't be much fleeter if it tried; It is ever sweetly singing while about you, swiftly winging, seeking out a place for stinging through your hide; In gore 'tis ever wadin', lanced from grandma and from maiden, till its veins are overladen with the stuff, And yet, though rich its diet, the small critter ne'er is quiet, and you really can't come nigh it, which is tuff; You think you're sure to wam it, and against the wall you jam it, but you'll sadly mutter dammit, as it skips; Oh, smart is Amos Keeter, on your very nose he'll teter, and he says "this is my meat-er," as he nips; Confound the wretched creature; he swells your ever feature, as he bleeds you like a leech or dineth off your face; Oh, if he sang in Eden, no stronger proof I'm needin' of the cause of the secedin' from that place.
I apologise for my indefensibly aweful spelling of awful.
- Rob
And inflammable
And Band-Aid
And "domonym" (at 13:25)?
awful should mean full of awe? Awesome should mean some awe?
@@danielcox3152And, Awenone means, no awe at, all.
Pertinent to demonyms: A friend of mine from Crete, Illinois once complained that he was doomed for life because as long as he lived in Crete he would be a Cretin, but if he ever left he'd be an excretian.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Cute 😂
Inhabitants of the island of Crete are known as Cretans. I’m not sure what I should read into the fact that the ones in Illinois chose to refer to themselves as Cretins! 😂
ohhhhhh heck yes😂
@@langdalepaul The States have a lot of places with borrowed names as well as funny/quirky ones. :) There's several Spartas, a few Hells, a Satan's Kingdom...
My favorite contronym is "pitch" because it's a double contronym. It can mean to actively promote or advocate for (pitch a new product), or it can mean to discard (pitch it in the bin). It can also mean a level surface (the players coming out on the pitch), or a steep incline (the roofer charged extra due to the pitch of my roof).
Or the pitch of a music note. yikes
it's all pitch black to me
@@wiseSYW Black as pitch, since you can't say 'black as tar-baby' anymore. Does anyone call tar pitch anymore?
Pitchers used to pitch balls to batters with pitch on their bat handles on a baseball pitch.
I imagine a revised "Who's on first" routine where the batter is John Woo and the pitcher is pitching woo.
@@fsinjin60 Aah! You just brought to mind that classic cricket commentary, when the commentator said "The bowler's Holding, the batman's Willey". He was, of course, referring to Michael Holding and Peter Willey as the bowler and batsman, respectively. The funniest part was when he realised what he had said and could hardly continue his commentary, because he was laughing so much.
I know - a complete tangent, but worth remembering.
@@jbejaran Did the roofer pitch you on coating your flat roof with pitch?
Another contronym would be "off," at least where I am in the states. My dad used to work for an alarm company, and he installed a burglar alarm for a convenience store that was owned by an Asian man who was not a native English speaker. My dad got the alarm installed and was telling this man how it worked. He said that if someone broke in the "alarm would go off." The man looked at him and said, "I don't want it to go off, I want it to go on."
Of course, "go off" always means to activate, "turn off" means to deactivate.
Kind of, but not exactly, I think.
‘Turn off’ and ‘go off’ are antonyms, but they’re not the same verb.
The adverbs ‘off’ within those verbs are antonyms, but the ‘off’ in ‘go off’ only has the meaning of active when in the context of the verb ‘go off’, it never has that meaning as an independent adverb.
@@mrosskne But "go off" can also mean "turn off" in certain contexts. If you say, "that light will go off if you flip that switch," it means the same if you use "turn off" instead.
@@recanady24 No one would say that.
I am currently tracking the American abandonment of prepositions which may be funky but is degrading the language. In contradition, we have new superfluous prepositions such as 'hate on.' My lastest irritation is 'lived experience' since I cannot work out what an 'unlived experience' would be.
As a foreigner, I'm proud of my language abilities to be able to follow this... great entertainment for a student!
As long as we have more than one nation, everyone's a foreigner to someone.
Regarding retronyms, there's a wonderful moment at the end of a Doctor Who episode where a companion for that episode only, who was picked up from the battlefields of the Great War, is returned to where he came from, and wished the best of luck by the Doctor "out there in World War One". And as the Doctor turns to leave, the man sadly asks him, "...One?"
I agree, one of the saddest words I've ever read, given the context.
😢
As a sewist, one of my favourite contronyms is the verb "trim": it can mean to remove small amounts from the edges to tidy them, or to add ornamentation (possibly made from the trimmings - which is itself a contronym!)
Isn’t the word seamster, or seamstress?
What happened to the word seamstress (or seamster)?
Those have fallen out of favor within sewing comunities I have been a part of - partly because seamster feels odd and not wanting the default to be feminine as well as having a gender neutral option is nice. Partly because a seamstress is just someone who sews which was in contradiction to someone who designs/cuts cloth/fits clothes. Sewist is just the word that gets commonly used.
@@Meeptome so you’re saying that seamster/seamstress implies just someone who sews, but sewist doesn’t? 😂 Don’t worry, I get it, it’s just more gender neutral bullshit. Etymologists of the future are going to have a field day with the early 21st century. The Middle Ages had The Great Vowel Shift. We’ve got The Great Gender Shift. 🙄
@@Meeptome I suppose the 'gender-neutral' version would have to be 'sewist'... can't imagine anyone wanting to call themselves a 'sewer'... 😉
George Carlin: "We have flammable, inflammable and non-inflammable. Why? Either the shit flamms or it doesn't!"
You should use en as prefix if it flamms. Like in enkindle. Enflammable would take out a lot of confusion.
I've never come across "non-inflammable". Is that a thing?
@@KT-dj4iy Recalling Strunk & White's _Elements of Style_ (4th Edition, IIRC), the issue is that people misunderstand "inflammable" as, well, non-ignitable or incapable of sustaining a flame (when, in fact, it means the opposite) and then backcoin "flammable" to mean, well, inflammable.
@@webwarren Interestingly, "non-inflammable" is obsolete, and the modern form is "nonflammable".
@@webwarren right, I get that. I was simply saying that in the midst of discussions like this, while I've heard people speak of, "flammable" (it can be burned); "inflammable" (it, too, can be burned); and "non-flammable" (it cannot be burned), I have never, until now, heard anyone mention "non-inflammable".
Now logic would suggest that being, in appearance at least, the negation of inflammable, "non-inflammable" would mean "not inflammable"; i.e. it cannot be burned. But since we're already dealing with the fact that in "inflammable", the supposed negating "in" is no such thing, then we have to accept that logic is in the corner, cowering and confused, and so there's really no way to tell what "non-inflammable" would mean, even if it were in common use. Maybe it's just a bit of flimflam, to render an already-confused situation even more flimsy. I was going to add "ba-dum-tish" after that, but I've been told, by ChatGPT, that "ba-dum-tish" is not a good representation of the drummer's flam, no matter how flamboyant, as I'd hoped it was.
Holy crap, a comments section that is a joy to read. I learned as much here as in the episode. I normally watch on tv so i dont see the comments. Didnt think there would be this much that would actually make reading comments worth my time.
Freaking great job all.
I'm surprised they didn't mention 'Victorian' which could mean of the era in the 19th century or it could mean a person from Victoria (in Australia). Or indeed "Georgian' which could mean something from a specific period of history, or it could mean someone from the country of Georgia. But somehow we get by :-D
Now that reminds me.
The best aptronym of all has to be Thomas Crapper, a businessman who invented a number of plumbing fixtures for the bathroom in the 19th century. Contrary to myth, "crap" and "crapping" are NOT named after him. The fact that he invented many bathroom fixtures is just a coincidence.
That smile of delight at 8:10 for Rob's epiphany at a meaning says everything about why this channel's so great. 😃
Rob noted "screen" can mean to hide something from view but in the case of a film, it means to show it off. Interestingly, it has a third meaning in between hiding and showing off, which is to filter something, as in screening passengers through a security checkpoint. So if you are using a Japanese screen, you can hide something, if you are using a silver screen, you can show something, but if you are using a permeable sieve type of screen, you are letting some things through and holding back other things.
As the late great author Terry Pratchett once wrote:
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror."
"The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad."
@@MySerpentine "It is said, do not seek counsel from Elves, for they will say both 'no' and 'yes'."
I literally just read that yesterday!!!
@@losthor1zon Different elves, but that is indeed another fun one. :)
@@losthor1zon Alfred means 'elf councilor!' :)
In German, you have the expression "jemanden umfahren". If you stress umfahren on the first syllable, it means to run over somebody (with a vehicle). If you stress on the second syllable, it means to drive around somebody (to avoid hitting them).
It's one of my favourite German phrases
What if you stress both syllables? Schrodinger's pedestrian? 😂
@@nicholasvinen you miss the pedestrian but open your door to still hit him
@@garegos7184😂
In German I found it unhelpful that the female form of ‘the’ is the same as the plural form. My brother and I were referred to as ‘die Boys ‘ but I always protested saying ‘der Boys’.
I've always enjoyed the fact that Cardinal Sin was the 30th archbishop of Manila (1976-2005?)..
Let's not forget about Pope Innocent III, who didn't exactly live up to his name.
You can have a lot of them in the military, such as Major Payne or General Rule.
@@joegoss30 Corporal Punishment, Private Papers.
@@arthurbrands6935 And, in the Navy, Seaman Stains.
Not quite the same thing, but I love that the Church contains primates 😂
I love how expressive Jess’s face is. Watching her listen to Rob & react to what he says is fun. He’s very British, understated, in his reactions. More muted/toned down but you can still see that he is reacting. Whereas Jess’s face is seldom still, lights up when intrigued, & just very mobile in a positive manner.
As to names: I knew a man named Bob Shishka. He hated it when people Shishka Bob(bed) him.
"Cleave" will always be my favorite contronym because it shows so well how etymology works.
In Dutch we have "kleven" for sticking together and "kloven" for taken things apart.
Lewis Carrol had some fun with fast as a contronym. The White Knight described being stuck in his helmet - stuck “fast as lightning.” Alice replied “but that’s a different kind of fastness.” To which the night replied “it was all kinds of fastness to me.”
That is excellent, especially since electric current can cause your muscles to seize, making it impossible to move away from the source.
The night replied in a very homophonic way.
Fast also means to starve.
@@LemonTubeAmigaI Feist fast and fat fastens in a fast fast, so I fast fast to unfasten fat from my fast fast.
A very specific and short lived aptronym, occurred in 2021, when the BBC sent one of their journalists to a petrol station to give a report on petrol shortages during the fuel crisis. His name is Phil McCann
Sounds like a name from the credits of the NPR show "Car Talk." (His brother Pat McCann is their sexual harassment instructor.)
then there was the Celtic gay couple, Ben Dover and Phil McAvity
😊🎉
@tikaanipippin
Wait. Didn't that one go-
Gerald Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzgerald?
🤣
A woman I worked with had an aptonym. She was in charge of renting out airplanes, and her name was Lisa Plane. So, if you wanted to lease a plane, go see Lisa Plane.
I knew an Anglican minister named Reverend Good. An acquaintance shared a hilarious story about a gentleman who worked at a tree nursery named Forest Greene 😂. She had called the nursery but couldn’t stop laughing to tell him what she was looking for.
Don't tell me her middle name was Nera.
A neat example of nominative determinism.
One day I will meet Edna Bucket
If you needed to borrow some money in the days of the Wild West, would you go to the bank and ask to see the Loan Arranger?
As a non native english speaker, i was always confused by the term "the alarm went off" because I thought that means the alarm was turned off.
Similarly, in the game, The Last of Us, a character says, "Flashlights out," as a group of people is going into a sewer system.
I think fully half of the players I've watched have misinterpreted that statement.
If the alarm was turned off, that means someone stopped it, which does not fit well with "the alarm went off". However if the alarm stops of it's own accord that would definitely mean that "the alarm went off" which is a contranym :)
... and we nave near misses which are actually near hits because they are complete misses, but only just!
@@timsmith5339
Also a "near missus" could refer to a runaway bride.
😄
@@UTU49 🤣
As a woman from Detroit, I refer to myself as a “Michigoose”. I love your channels, by the way 🥰
🤣
I first heard this quip from a first speaker of German: When a subsistence farmer was asked what they did with their crops, he replied, " We eat what we can, and what we can't we can."
Even funnier when you learn that 'to can' in the US means to store on glass jars
@@derekmills5394is that why oldsters specify “tin” can?
@@lorraineliggera4229 No. Originally all steel cans used to preserve food were coated with Tin to avoid oxidation. Today many have a very thin plastic liner instead of Tin, as do Aluminium cans for carbonated beverages.
So they were Tinned cans which got shortened to Tin. They were never exclusively made from Tin
@@derekmills5394 Also the earliest cans were soldered shut with lead/tin solder and the process of soldering can be referred to as "tinning". I have no evidence that that affected the development of the term tin can, but hey, corrupted etymology is an English tradition.
@@fristlsat4663 Soldering also caused lead poisoning
Given a US citizen and a British speaker of English talking about antonyms, I was surprised at the omission of "endorse." In the UK it means to put negative points on a driving license, as well as to recommend something. The comedian Jasper Carrot told a story, a long time ago, about being stopped by a traffic cop in LA who asked to see Carrot's license. The cop saw Carrot's UK license had several endorsements and was very impressed, assuming it meant the equivalent of praise. Had the word been "citation" however, the cop would have known how to interpret than antonym too, which can mean "being cited for some infraction and therefore liable to some punishment" or it can mean "being recognized for some act of courage or outstanding effort as per "captain Wallace received the Presidential citation for his actions during the battle of Kandahar, when his prompt thinking saved the lives of his platoon."
My college has a grading system that allows the option of a citation. In this case it is a positive thing.
I like that this comment contains the word "outstanding", which I had to relearn as an adult, where it more frequently means overdue than excellent.
As a research scientist I'm judged by my citations. More is better 🙂 Endorsements are good, too 😀
My younger middle child has recently got their learners permit. They have endorsements & the DMV worker referred to them as both endorsements & restrictions. They used like 5 different words when referring to the endorsements actually. They have one for having a hypoplastic optic nerve in one eye, for being visually limited/needing glasses in the other, another for one of their mental health diagnosis, & one that requires them to have a side mirror on the drivers side specifically (I hadn’t realized that side view mirrors can be prescriptive & be a requirement on a specific side or on both) as I wasn’t the one that took the older two to get their licenses/permits. I need to check the older kids’ licenses now.
Between the Nordic languages we have some words like that too. Danish "tilbud" means "discount", while the seemingly same word in Swedish - "tillbud" means "(very serious) accident, sickness" etc. And also between the Nordic languages and English, example: "kvinna" - older spelling and once also older pronunciation "quinna" - is cognate with English "queen" but simply means "woman". "Mat" and "meat" are cognates too, but "mat" is food in general. It's the other way around with "fläsk", cognate with "flesh" but means "pork meat" only or sometimes used vulgar/urban as "fat" as in obesity. "Rör på fläsket!" is about the Swedish equivalent of English "Move your fat ass!"
Your Canadian/Canadien/Canuck audience loves your show as we often straddle the linguistic line between Brits and Americans.
Same for Aussies!
I've heard that Canadians spell "pizza" "pee, eye, zee, zed, ay".
WHat, you did not call yourself a 'hoser'? Or is that a particular subset of Canadians?
@@thomasmacdiarmid8251 Hey, hey, hey! Let's clean up the language in the comments. No reason to start name calling, ya hoser!
@@allendracabal0819 Yes. Correctly. 😁
A contronym that was part of 1970's slang: 'bad'. My older brother (a musician) was with his girlfriend (an editor at Allen and Unwin who had studied under J.R.R. Tolkien) visiting his alma mater in California, when a musician he knew ran into them. The guy was super excited about a recording session he'd been in, and exclaimed "It was bad! Man, it was soo bad!" And throughout, my brother was happy for the guy and kept saying things like, "That's great! Awesome!"
His girlfriend was thoroughly confused until he mentioned, "You know -- 'bad' means 'good'." Her response? "Americans will be the death of English!"
See also 'wicked'
We also have now: This is shit. This is THE shit.
@@totalbiscuit4758 Also "dope." Being dope is good.
My children back-formed from hoover and used to talk about hooving rather than hoovering. Which makes complete sense. They also came up with "stepth" instead of steepness because of course we have depth rather than deepness
If an Oversight Committee does its job well or poorly, oversight is involved……BRILLIANT!!
Contronym: Earthbound. Bound to the Earth vs. Traveling toward the Earth from elswhere.
Isn't that just an extension of bound? Meaning both something which is distant from but for which it is destined, or something rigidly adhered to something else so that it is indistinguishable from being once separated. Earth being the subject of an object for which it may be bound.
Rob's obvious enjoyment of these topics is wonderful to behold. He looks so like a quokka when he's pleased and excited!
But I am afraid those playing the 'Rob blushes' game came away quite sober.
@@thomasmacdiarmid8251 really? Because he was very very red by the end of that video :)
Sorry, @catherinesommer3648, what’s a quokka?
@@tessabrisac7423 A cute (dare I say, Rob-like) rodent from Western Australia, which look like they are smiling when they get selfies taken with visiting celebrities. Google tennis great "Roger Federer quokka" for a famous example.
@@tessabrisac7423 It's a marsupial that lives in only a few parts of Australia. From Wikipedia:
"Although looking rather like a very small kangaroo, it can climb small trees and shrubs up to 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in). Its coarse fur is a grizzled brown colour, fading to buff underneath."
Can't speak to the accuracy of OP's comparison as I'm blind, but it made me laugh. You don't hear about quokkas much.
Personal caconym favorite: I'm from France (Normandy), and the closest bakery we got is name after its owners and founders, Brûlé ("Burnt").
I only today discovered your channel and have subscribed.
I love your project and will be a regular viewer.
For many years I have been interested in languages, why we say things the way we do.
My personal favourites are phrases and proverbs:
- "Bob's your uncle" in English
- "to make blue" or "to be blue" in German
- "Don't make a goat your gardener" German
"Don't make the wolf your shepherd" French
"Don't put a fox in charge of the henhouse" English
"Dont' give a thief the key to your house" Chinese
Shrapnel is an eponym. From General Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842) who invented the artillery shell.
And another - "flak" - is an acronym imported into English (from the German "FLugzeugAbwehrKanone", literally "aircraft defense cannon")
So, if you come back to a party, you might ask, "Who's left?" And that could mean; Who is still here? Or Who has already gone?
That's because "who's" can be a contraction of "who is" as well as "who has," which changes the meaning.
"There were fifteen people. Ten people left. Now, there are five people left." :-)
who's on first
It's the results of the similar apostphications of the two differing phrases.
The comma s is misleading
In an early meeting of British and American military leaders in World War, the British wanted to table an idea and the Americans objected. It took them a significant amount of discussion to realize both sides wanted the same thing.
Which WW was this?
My understanding of the origins of the difference is that: in Congress, the table is behind the speaker where the paper is out of sight and in Parliament, the table is in the centre of the room where the document can be referred to. Whether or not this is the true origin, it is an easy way to remember the difference.
@@TedLittle-yp7uj and also in UK english when an agenda item is to be put aside it is 'shelved' - is that not the same in US english? The shelves being where you store things that you don't need right now.
@@andyjdhurley That is true but, as alluded to in the video, US English seems to consider "shelved" as a more permanent action than "tabled."
Table is a formal term used in some rules of orders, specifically the United States, Congress, which means to defer.
Apparently the etymology of “plaster” is as follows:
The word "plaster," as used in the UK to refer to what is known in the US as a "band-aid," has its roots in the Latin word *emplastrum*, which means "a plaster" or "a salve." This Latin term itself is derived from the Greek word *emplastron*, which referred to a plaster or ointment applied to wounds. The Greek *emplastron* is related to the verb *emplassein*, meaning "to daub on" or "to plaster."
In Middle English, the term evolved into *plastre*, which referred to a medicinal preparation applied to the body. Over time, the meaning expanded to include not just the medicinal paste or ointment, but also the material (often cloth) used to cover and protect wounds. By the time the term entered the modern English language, it had come to refer to both the material and the practice of covering a wound, hence its use today in the UK to refer to a small adhesive bandage used to cover minor cuts or injuries.
So, in summary:
- **Greek**: *Emplastron* (a plaster, ointment)
- **Latin**: *Emplastrum* (a plaster, salve)
- **Middle English**: *Plastre* (medicinal preparation)
- **Modern English**: "Plaster" (UK usage for adhesive bandage)
To make matters worse, platicise means to coat in plastic, or to make flexible.
A "broken record" is either something that just happened for the first time, or something that is repeating over and over and over again.
In Michigan, the demonym is Michigander, so women are often playfully called Michigeese
Michigan comes from the Ojibwe word "mishigami," which means "big lake," so Lake Michigan is "Lake Big Lake." Would that be considered a tautonym?
I'm from Michigan also and this is not true. Nobody calls women that
@@jdhenge It isn't common, but it has been recorded since at least the 1940s. Compare Mencken's "Names for Americans" (1947), quote: "The chief objection to Michigander is that it inspires idiots to call a Michigan woman a Michigoose and a child a Michigosling, but the people of the State have got used to this."
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@@jdhenge
@MM-whatzizname did, so you are stuck with it.
I loved learning about cleave! I was tickled when I realized “hew” and “cleave” are each contronyms, and (because they mean the same things) synonyms/antonyms to each other.
Contronym! Now I know what to call the word inhabitable! If a place can be lived in, it is habitable. If it is not liveable, it's uninhabitable. Inhabitable can mean either that the place is not habitable or that it can be inhabited.
Not sure, I think inhabitable would always be the positive. But I am old :-)
@@IanKemp1960 I, too, believe it means it can be inhabited.
Hi! Aussie here. Our Newcastle residents are called Novocastrians... similarly Newcastle here is known for coal mining and used to be known for steel works.
"literally" is one of the more frustrating contronyms for me. Because people used it so often in a hyperbolic manner, "literally" now means both to be taken at its face value and to be taken figuratively
"Literally" is not a contronym because it doesn't also *mean* "figuratively", it can just be *used* in a figurative way as an intensifier. I've seen this mistake implied when someone hypercorrected and said "figuratively" in a place where one might use "literally" in a figurative way, but where what they were speaking of was not as they said in any figurative way. The specific example that comes to mind is someone said that somebody had "figuratively the highest grade in the class", and I asked what their high grade was figurative of, and they were confused for a moment before explaining that they just meant it wasn't *literally* the *highest* grade in the class, it was just a very high grade. It would have been better if they had just used "literally" in a figurative way instead of saying "figuratively" in a nonsensical way.
@@Pfhorrest webster's defitinion:
: in effect : virtually -used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
am i mistaken? legit asking: isnt this definition the opposite meaning of the traditional definition of"literally"?
further down in Webster it does say "its meaning is not quite identical to that of figuratively ('with a meaning that is metaphorical rather than literal')."
but i think its last definition is still opposite to its original use
@@blaictsomh I think the difference here is that between "contrary" and "contradictory". The hyperbolic (and thus figurative) usage of "literally" is contrary to its original (literal) usage, but not contradictory, it doesn't literally mean "not literally" as "figuratively" does, it just doesn't literally mean "literally" either. ~F(x) vs F(~x) if you'll indulge the formality.
Further to @Pfhorrest's comments, using "literally" as an intensifier in this way goes back to the 1600's. It's not a new "mistake". And it was considered perfectly literary until the 1800's, when many literary scholars became overly pedantic about presumed "mistakes" and tried to discourage many previously common English practices. (Same with double negatives (eg, "ain't nothing"), which had centuries of accepted use as negative-intensifiers, before being shunned as "uneducated".)
@@Pfhorrest so does that categorize this as a contronym or no? and if not, what does it mean to be the opposite of literally? or what is the contradiction to literally?
I believe this episode actually contains a folk etymology, Jess says ‘onomatopoetic’ while Rob uses ‘onomatopoeic’. I personally prefer to use the same one as Jess, purely because it’s more fun, even if it may not be more original or accurate.
I also fear RobWords is an inaptronym as he spends far more time giving out words than stealing them off folk
Oh no, I've given myself a caconym! I reckon both "onomato-". are legit.
Rob
On one of the 2,000 Year Old Man records Mel Brooks says things were named from "onomatopoetica". He cites, for example, "shower" as coming from opening the hot water tap too much, so the resulting sound is: Shhhh... Ow!!!! Thus, it is a shhh-ow-er.
I'm glad you caught that! It is more usual to see onomatopoeic, but I maintain that both are correct because its back half is from the Greep poein, meaning "to make, create, compose"-the same source as "poem," "poet" and "poetic." And like you, I prefer the way "onomatopoetic" rolls off the tongue. - Jess
With recent usage, DROP is a contranym. As in "Rob and Jess dropped a video" could mean they put a new one on TH-cam, or conceivably that they took one off.
I also wanted to note that "get stuck in" is one of my favorite British English terms that I've never heard here in the US.
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It’s also interesting in American English how the verbs “to be up for something” and “to be down for something” have the same meaning.
“You up for some pizza?”
“Yeah, I’m down.”
To get it do you go uptown or downtown?
And when a house burns up, it burns down.
@@belindaandjoelvanbergeijk9377 I usually hear “down with that” rather than “down for that”, but I think I might have heard both.
@@PhilBagelsWe are very sloppy with our prepositions.
and 'slim chance' or 'fat chance'
Can't believe "deceptively" wasn't mentioned! One of my favorite contranyms. If a body of water is "deceptively shallow," does that mean it looks deep but is in fact shallow, or that it's actually much deeper than it appears?
Love the show, guys
I don't see how you derive those two - deceptively shallow to me only means "looks shallow but isn't". Now "deceptively deep" is more easily taken two ways: looks deep but isn't or looks a certain depth but is actually deeper.
That’s pretty good. I’d say if it’s shallow, it’s shallow. If one is deceived about its shallowness , that means it appears deeper than it is. But requires mental acrobatics
Weirdly the deep v shallow example seems, at least to me, ambiguous but easy v hard doesn't. A deceptively easy puzzle looks like it will be complicated but is easy whereas a deceptively hard puzzle looks like it will but straight forward but isn't.
@@wheresmyoldaccount Yes, it seems quite contextual. Also, if you add in a word like looks, seems, appears, etc then you may change the meaning. "The puzzle is deceptively hard" vs "the puzzle appears deceptively hard." They suggest opposite meanings to me. It's a very ambiguous adverb!
@@bonnie115 This is one of those things that people will argue over, which only goes to show that the word is decidedly unclear.
I just had a contranym show up minutes ago from my wife, and I really didn't know which version she meant.
She had some plans that she was going to do today, but was taking some time at her computer to check emails, news, and watch a show, and then was going to get to her plans.
I just checked in on her and she said, "I'm all caught up."
At first I thought she meant that she had completed all of her computer tasks -- emails, news, etc. -- and was now free to go do her tasks. "Caught up" meaning that she has no more computer tasks to do and is free to move on with her day.
What she actually meant was that she was "caught up" in the storyline of the show and couldn't stop binge watching it. She was "caught up" meaning "ensnared" like in a fishing net, and was NOT free to move on with her day.
The professor told his class that negatives used once or twice might still be negative, but in no language would consecutive positives be negative. A student up the front muttered “yeah, right.”
The use of "table" to mean put aside is interesting. In the UK, we would "shelve" it. Put it on a shelf for later. I think I prefer that because tables are generally items that are in daily use, but a shelf is a storage place used less often.
in the US people will say "shelve" to mean setting it aside indefinitely rather than temporarily.
usually because they want to get to the thing at some point, but lack the means.
sort of like an inventor working on a project but lacking the tech to make it a reality. the project will be "shelved" rather than completely discarded, with the intention of returning to it eventually.
Table is used parliamentarily.
The interesting thing to me is that both usages (put aside to come back to later and put aside more or less permanently) both come from parliamentary procedure. I don't know when Americans started using motions to table as a means of setting something aside permanently rather than just temporarily.
@@rmdodsonbills "tabling" something is *supposed* to be a temporary setting aside because other things take precedence, but people have started to use it somewhat passive-aggressively, because apparently outright saying "no" to someone is considered rude in the business world.
@@dursty3226 Look, talk all you want about "supposed to be" I'm telling you what is.
Further to the confusion which I also have with "shelled almonds" I'd like to add "pitted cherries".
Ah when nature gets verbed at man's hands.
Or Almonds subject to an artillery barrage.
@@Brunoburningbrightan all too common issue for almond enthusiasts and breeders alike
or boned chicken...
Stoned olives could, of course, have been favourites during the sixties Hippie Era.
The italian chief of police was called Antonio Manganelli, the surname literally means batons / nightsticks.
Just perfect.
My favourite eponym is boycott, named after Captain Charles Boycott, a land owner who tried to evict people from his land. The people then refused to trade with him or work for him, and completely shunned him
And in today's political environment - there's "gerrymander" too. A portmanteau of "salamander" and politician Elbridge Gerry
I have just encountered this delightful channel, and have two aptronyms to contribute. When my family was in the process of moving to Houston in the 1960's, my father, who came before the rest of us, would tell us various bits about our new home-to-be. Two of his favorites were that someone named Tunnel was running for Railroad Commissioner, and the other, which is still very much alive today, was Earthman Funeral Homes.
Vel-Cro, the brand name commonly used to refer to "hook and loop" closures, is a shortened version of "Velour-Crochet" - "velour" for the loops and "crochet" for the hooks.
That's great to know!
6:00 A Yorkshireman here: Fast as an adverb has to me always meant 'firmly' and when I saw a Kwik Fit garage sign proclaiming "Exhausts fitted fast" I was relieved as I didn't want my car exhaust system to drop off.
Yorkshire born, but grew up in Kent, so I'm familiar with the Yorkshire idea of fast. Similarly used in the south in expressions like "fast asleep" as in deeply, firmly, solidly, thoroughly, etc.
Tar Tar Pits, as a character, sounded the death knell for the Tar Wars franchise.
A saga oozing with sticky situations! - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled Not long ago, in a petroleum glob not far away . . .
@@WordsUnravelled Also, I prefer to get my sticky from synonym rolls . . . ba dump PSSHH
IT"S A TRAP!
In addition to "The La Brea Tar Pits", which means "The The Tar Tar Pits", there's also
The Los Angeles Angels = The The Angels Angels
In traditional Hawaiian cooking, they would dig a pit in the ground and line it with rocks to cook in. Now referred to as a "kalua pit", which means "the pit pit". And there was even a restaurant in Hawaii (which might still exist) called "The Kalua Pit" = "The The Pit Pit".
A city near Los Angeles called "Glendale" = "Valley Valley".
@@PhilBagels I used to live in LA and 'glen dale' never even occurred to me.
One of my favorite kinda-sorta-contronyms is “to determine”: It could mean either that “you _don’t know_ how something works, so you figure it out,” or it can mean “to define/establish/decree how something works meaning that you _do know_ how it works.”
I have used the term “word nerd” in reference to myself for years. I’m so pleased that you’ve come up with it as well.
There are a lot of tautonyms in Chinese because ancient Chinese used a lot of one syllable words and people were like "I'm sorry but can you repeat that?" and they did and now the repeated word has become the word. An example in English would be "Bye bye" for "Goodbye"
I've noticed my Thai friend uses the term "same same" when she means "same." Maybe your explanation gives insight into why she says this.
Interesting, @@Vic-Meow. In the Bantu-influenced varieties of English spoken in Africa, words are said twice to add emphasis or some other effect. There is, for instance, now, just now and now-now. If something is inexplicable it is said to have happened "somehow-somehow." If one is being idle they are said to be "there-there." "As if as if" is being affectatious .
Also, because in more modern chinese, a 'complete meaning' is generally indicated by 2-3 characters - so when the word by itself is already the complete meaning, some such words are repeated to indicate that it is complete. Sometimes, a synonym is used instead, and sometimes there's a generically related placeholder just to complete the pattern!
@@bluerendar2194Another consideration is rhythm. A sentence in Chinese sounds like "Dada dada dada dada". For example a lot of traditional sayings consist of four characters. That's another reason why so many words in Chinese are made up of two characters.
@@MusayeEmphasis in English would be like saying "I am very very happy". In Tagalog " I very much love you" is "Mahal na mahal kita" whereas "I love you" is "Mahal kita". I am not fluent in Tagalog but I think doubling adjectives and adverbs is common. I used to joke with my wife that the BBC is the "boring na boring channel".
I think doubling an adjective in Chinese makes it an adverb so if you say "xiaoxin" it means "careful" but "xiaoxiao xinxin" would be "carefully".
Did you mention "Hoosier" for people from Indiana?
Jess, I got your book (Hell) and am tearing through it. It's very fun!
Just wanted to say both of you have such lovely smiles. A delight to both see and hear.
We didn't! There are so many wonderfully fanciful demonyms! And thank you so much for picking up the book! - Jess
As someone who lives in Indiana--the state below Michigan and beside Illinois--I kept waiting for Jess to mention it!
@sourisvoleur4854 I hope you read it before you tore through it! (Is that some sort of onym?)
Not a demonym but it made me think of how people see or think of themselves. I once saw an advert for holidaying in Belgium and its selling point was 'We are slightly different' Still makes me smile when i think of it now.
I expected that on a podcast called Words Unravelled that when they discussed flammable and inflammable, they would have tackled ravel and unravel meaning the same thing.
Jess, Robin Mahfood is my absolute favourite. I've used this example many times and has to keep proving it.
I did not expect to enjoy two people talking about words for 50 minutes.
I'm a bit worried that the air will start to crackle between them, sometimes
I specifically chose this video out of the rest because it was double the length of most of the rest of them. I'd love to see so many more 50+ minute episodes.
Taser. Unbelievable. I believe it, but, still, unbelievable.
Tom Swifties are quotations with an adverbial punchline, like "Put down that knife" he said sharply, or "Never put ice in my drink" he said coldly.
"We might try camping here," said Tom, tentatively.
"Be careful where you swing that axe," said Tom offhandedly.
@@allendracabal0819 My dad and uncles used to sit around coming up with this type. The more absurd or disturbing the connection and the harder you had to think to get it the better.
I remember in the mid 60's Time Magaszine ran Swifties in one of their columns and our family would come up with our own over breakfast. Both parents were language professors.
Yes to all above. This was fun absurd sport in high school in the 60s. "I hate taking exams!" he said testily.
Some other proprietary names are:
Sheetrock for drywall
Formica for high pressure laminate
Skilsaw for portable circular saw
Frisbee for a throwable plastic disc.
Levi's for blue jeans
Aspirin for acetylsalicylic acid (Bayer AG's trademark, nullified in the Treaty of Versailles)
Kleenex for facial tissue
Xerox for dry-process photocopy
Taser for an electric stun gun
Escalator for moving stairway (Otis, the originator of the safety brake on modern elevators)
Zamboni for an ice-rink resurfacer
and so, so many more!
Kleenex for tissues
@@HayTatsuko Another proprietary name from Bayer AG that they would like to conveniently forget: Heroin - the trade name for their formulation of diacetylmorphine
styrofoam, dumpster too
Great video - thank you! Two contributions: 1. I used to live in central Illinois, about twenty miles south of a town by the name of Oglesby. The locals referred to the citizenry as Oglesbians...and most of the residents had the sense and good humor to embrace it. 2. Not original to our family, but we have three dogs and long ago abandoned both vacuuming and hoovering for the far more appropriate - in our life experience - barkuuming.
resign - quit
resign - sign up for more
The difference is the pronunciation.
Though it is not a single word, the phrase "out-of-the-box" can also be seen as a contronym. An "out-of-the-box solution" refers to a pre-built or turn-key application that can be implemented in a standard way, something that came out of a box. While "out-of-the-box thinking" refers to creative non-standard ideas or design, a bespoke solution that is the opposite of pre-built. An idea that is outside of the pre-conceived box of what is possible.
In my experience the latter is "thinking outside the box".
@@tromboniator "thinking outside the box" is older, but the two versions have become interchangeable as buzzwords in the business world.
out-of-the-box-thinking is a (gramatically) incorrect way of saying outside-the-box-thinking and should not be propagated as a saying.
Speaking of shelled pistachios, my sister's pet peeve is the expression seeded grapes. You will sometimes see this stand in contrast to seedless grapes. However, back when we were kids you couldn't get seedless grapes. Seeding the grapes meant removing the seeds. So seeded grapes were grapes with no seeds
Retronym + contranym.
Nice.
When I was eight years old, I developed an interest in butterflies, and when I turned nine I was given a display case of specimens (that I was most proud of) on our living room wall. One day, a friend came to visit for afternoon tea, when I pointed to the display and exclaimed "Look - butterflies!". Upon which my friend, as a joke, picked up a handful of dairy spread from the table, hurled it at the display, and exclaimed "Look - Butter flies!". (This genuinely happened; fortunately the display wasn't damaged, and, 55 years later adorns the living room wall at my current abode.)
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I've heard people wonder why it is called a butterfly instead of a flutterby.
@@coyotezee I always call them flutterbys, because they do. I thought I was the only one!
You guys are so good at this!
Contrive is another word with a lot of flexibility depending upon how it's used. If you say something is contrived it might mean it is fake or unnatural ("his TH-cam comment seemed overly contrived"), but if you contrive to make something happen, it would be seen as a clever success ("RobWords and Jess Zaffaris contrived to make word nerding great again").
Not quite a contranym, but a negative can be expressed by a double positive “yeah right.”
I have to credit Amelia Bedelia for these: dusting, pitted. My favorite contronym that I’d love to know the origins of is: “off” like the alarm went off (meaning it’s sounding) vs the alarm is off (it is not sounding)
I loooved Amelia Bedelia! Her sponge cake alwas made me laugh the most. :) - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled I didn't yet think of there being types of words, but her dusting the furniture was probably the first contronym I encountered as a little word nerd. It also just ocured to me that maybe her name is Amelia as in ameliorate because shes always just trying to help.
I recently commented that "I live off black beer" which actually means the exact same thing as saying "I live on black beer"
One of my and my mom's favorite books!
I love how in German "umfahren" means both "to run something over" and "to swerve around something"..
However, it's pronounced differently (different stress) and the Grammar is different so there is hardly a situation where you could be confused as to which is actually meant.
@@raempftl Usually, yes. Although the written phrase "Ich würde diese Person auf der Straße gerne umfahren." is absolutly ambivalent in it's meaning as long as it's not spoken aloud.
@@raempftl Yes, there's hardly any way to make that one ambiguous within a proper sentence ("umgefahren" vs. "umfahren"; "fahre um" vs. "umfahre" etc).
There are other examples from German that require very specific circumstances. "Ich trinke Bier in Maßen" (I drink beer in moderation) is my favourite. It only works when capitalized. Due to special rules applying to the ß (sharp S), it is turned into "ICH TRINKE BIER IN MASSEN", which means the opposite. Extra bonus for the fact that the original may also refer to drinking beer "one Maß at a time" (Maß being a large measure of beer).
That's a bit like in swedish "kör på". It can have three different meanings depending on how you apply stress to the two syllables. It literally translates to "drive on". If your stress the second word, "kör PÅ", then that's a traffic accident, you hit or bump into someone or something with your vehicle. If you stress both syllables equally it means you keep on driving (frequently used in a metaphorical sense, keeping on doing whatever you where doing). If you stress the first syllable "KÖR på" it means you are talking about driving on some kind of surface/tires/fuel to be specified earlier or later in the sentence, or is obvious by the specific circumstances of the conversation.
One of my favorite eponyms is mesmerize, named after Franz Mesmer. Its a fascinating one that surprised me with its continued use after the original origin has been largely forgotten.
"rent" is my most despised contronym. Even with the context of a whole sentence or two it can be impossible to tell which side of the renting is being referred to.
"drop" is another bad one. I've been like "what? they decided against releasing that?" only to realize the meaning was that it had just released
And I agree with Rob on irregardless. 1870 was "only" 150 years ago.
So rich, interesting, thought-provoking! This is the kind of thing the internet and social media ought to be brimming with. Thank you for making me think, and think about English words.
Here's some inaptronyms from Australia: former head of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was Ken Butcher.
A doctor who worked at a hospital I worked at many years ago was Dr Butcher, and another was Dr Death (pronounced deeth, rhymes with teeth).
My oculist is Dr. Metzger.
I knew a guy whose last name was Klutz. He insisted that it was of German origin and was pronounced "Clouse." I don't buy Death as Deeth anymore than I did that.
We had a Dr. Payne at the Ontario Cancer Institute.
Many years ago I had a hand injury. I needed physical therapy and the doctor I went to was Dr. Grabb. A year or two later, my then husband had to have a wisdom tooth removed. The dentist who performed the extraction was Dr. Fear.
@@r0bw00dThat's Fraunk-n-Steen.
Another great video. Jell-o and Frisbee are used in mainstream speech but are brands. Laser is an acronym.
Which is why LASER is correctly spelled in all upper case (MASER as well)
@@dbmail545 I've seen Laser, Maser, and Radar being spelled with lowercase letters since they're in everyday usage.
Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus aka SCUBA, too.
In 1979 the English band The Rumour released an LP with the delightfully exonymic rhyming title Frogs Sprouts Clogs And Krauts, referring successively to the French, Belgians, Dutch and Germans, by their successive characteristics of eating frogs, originating the vegetable Bussells Sprouts, wearing wooden shoes, and eating pickled cabbage called Sauerkraut.
There is an interesting pair of Demonyms in the German city of Jena. Historically, the inhabitants are called Jenenser, but in modern times many people use the typical forming rules and say Jenaer. Since lots of students come from all over Germany to attend the university in Jena, the new version is easily spread, which resulted in a split: People born in Jena are called Jenenser, while those who moved there (especially those who only live there temporarily) are Jenaer.
i just discovered this channel and i can't stop smiling, thank you!!!
I was at a wildlife park with friends a couple of years ago looking at northern lynxes. One friend asked why the info board had lynx lynx lynx written on it, thinking it was enough to say it was a lynx once. I explained about binomials and trinomials and generic names, specific epithets and subspecific epithets. I'm rather pleased to learn the word tautonym today,
One subspecies of Gorilla gorilla is Gorilla gorilla gorilla.
@@sydhenderson6753 My husband brought this up the second this definition was explained (He's a primatologist - and a taxonomist as well :) )
Gorilla gorilla makes me hear the old song "Corinna, Corinna" in my head...
Lynx lynx lynx is, what, chain lynx?
@@stevetournay6103 Genus Lynx, Species lynx, subgenus lynx. Taxonomic rules are just like that ::)
Meles meles. Vulpes Vulpes. Rattus Rattus. One day I'll see a badger, hopefully :-)
You missed my favorite homonymic contronym - Raise/raze. You can have a barn raising or you can raze a neighborhood in order to build a new highway.
Raise it up and raze it down.
As a former Michigander I can confirm both yooper and troll are correct: yooper referring to the way upper pen people [mis]pronounce "upper" and troll because those in the lower pen "live under a [Mackinac] bridge" and both are semi-derogatory terms used mostly by inhabitants of one pen (or the other) to referring to members of the opposite pen
I thought yooper is from "the UP" (pronounced "the yoo pee").
@@resourceress7 This is actually the other explanation I heard as a kid growing up. However, since I never heard anyone use "LPer/elper" (vs UPer/yooper) in all the years I lived there the reasoning I gave above is the one that resonated with me. Additionally, until I actually lived in the upper pen (went to college at MTU) I had never heard "troll": people in the lower pen definitely DO NOT refer to themselves collectively as trolls. As both terms are used in at least a semi-derogatory manner, as mentioned above, its is more likely the term was intended as a slight against a [different] pattern of speech than a reference to geographic location.
@@khy6330 Thanks for sharing more details.
@@resourceress7 it is.
Awesome video thanks to both Jess and Rob. God bless you both
The bad things about English are what make it the best language in the world. As someone who speaks about 5 languages I feel there’s no language as awesome as English. The elegance of these rules being flaunted are so beautifully exploited bringing us joy
The contronym that always got to me on the news: if the government announces that violence is "sanctioned" in your area, you better find out which one they mean -- fast!
This show is fabulous, unbelievable, incredible, awesome, terrific ... 🎉
I'm surprised you missed one contronym. Aloha!
When I moved to Livermore, California and I was wondering if people who lived there would be called "Livermorons".
Only a Livermoron would refer to themselves as a Livermoron.
Ok, this one is hard to beat. The contractor who connected our septic system to the city was a Chinese named "Dung." Honest, he really was!
I learned a lot, and had a lot of fun. I absolutely loved this topic! Thank you!
No mention of my favourite inaptronym, police officer Rob Banks!
Better still he’s actually Robin Banks
I'm a big fan of that poem where all the rhymes come from verbs that are improperly irregularized, can't remember the title but the last line has the classic contronym: "I had promised to cleave, and I've cleft".
"The Lovers" by Amos Keeter (Punchinello, vol. 1, no. 27, 1 October 1870)
"Are those mountains as high as they say they are?" "I dunno, princess, I guess I never clumb one"
"The Lovers" by Phoebe Cary
Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught,
And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher who praught,
Though his enemies called him a screecher who straught.
His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking and sunk,
And his eye, meeting hers, began winking and wunk;
While she, in her turn, kept thinking, and thunk.
He hastened to woo her, and sweetly he wooed,
For his love grew until to a mountain it grewed,
And what he was longing to do then he doed.
In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke,
To seek with his lips what his heart long had soke;
So he managed to let the truth leak, and it loke.
He asked her to ride to the church, and they rode;
They so sweetly did glide that they both thought they glode.
And they came to the place to be tied, and were toed.
Then homeward, he said, let us drive, and they drove,
And as soon as they wished to arrive, they arrove,
For whatever he couldn't contrive, she controved.
The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole;
At the feet where he wanted to kneel then he knole;
And he said, "I feel better than ever I fole"
So they to each other kept clinging, and clung,
While Time his swift circuit was winging, and wung;
And this was the thing he was bringing, and brung:
The man Sally wanted to catch, and had caught;
That she wanted from others to snatch, and had snaught;
Was the one that she now like to scratch, and she scraught.
And Charley's warm love began freezing, and froze,
While he took to teazing, and cruelly toze
The girl he had wished to be squeezing, and squoze.
"Wretch!" he cried, when she threatened to leave him, and left,
"How could you deceive me, and you have deceft?"
And she answered, "I promised to cleave, and I've cleft."
"The Lovers" is by Phoebe Cary. Amos Keeter is a great poem too:
Amos Keeter
There's a lively little creeter which is known as Amos Keeter and it couldn't be much fleeter if it tried;
It is ever sweetly singing while about you, swiftly winging, seeking out a place for stinging through your hide;
In gore 'tis ever wadin', lanced from grandma and from maiden, till its veins are overladen with the stuff,
And yet, though rich its diet, the small critter ne'er is quiet, and you really can't come nigh it, which is tuff;
You think you're sure to wam it, and against the wall you jam it, but you'll sadly mutter dammit, as it skips;
Oh, smart is Amos Keeter, on your very nose he'll teter, and he says "this is my meat-er," as he nips;
Confound the wretched creature; he swells your ever feature, as he bleeds you like a leech or dineth off your face;
Oh, if he sang in Eden, no stronger proof I'm needin' of the cause of the secedin' from that place.
@@aprildawnhurt1435 ooh that's a good one! I wasn't familiar
The vicar who performed my first wedding was called Reverend Sermon. A very apt aptronym.
My parents wedding was conducted by a Welshman called Ivor Pugh. (Similar sounding to "I've a pew")
I knew a Reverend Good
The minister who baptized my daughter was a Reverend Good
We had a Rev. John Baptist here...
The information density of this video is amazing!
I might have to go on record as saying this was my favourite episode so far. Great work!
Another contronym -
Mind: to have authority over someone, or to submit to someone else's authority.
The pistachios had been bombarded by artillery.
One of them was a salted 😁
So they were shelled to become de-shelled.
Damn it, someone else had the exact same joke as me!
An example of a contronym in French is hôte, which can mean both host and guest.
It's the same with older English. The alternative meaning of course still remains in the word "hostile".
@@doctorzingo Interesting!
Like patron.
i enjoy listening to you both - your banter is great !