Has anyone ever wished you a sick time, or said you make a mean revision timetable? You probably already know they weren’t being rude, but you may not know they were using a contronym. Contronyms are ...

Plenty of antonyms are as straightforward as they seem: inside versus outside, agree versus disagree, and so forth. But ...

They’re called “contronyms” or, less elegantly, “auto-antonyms.” They’re words that are their own antonyms—that mean one thing and a polar-opposite thing at the same time—and they include terms like ...