In a book I'm reading re homophones, author James J. Kilpatrick writes,
"Moot is a tricker, one of a handful of words known as contranyms. It can mean both 'open to argument' and 'no longer open to argument.'"
and....
"(It may not clarify, and may only add to the confusion, to note that peak is contranymic; it can mean to reach the top, but it also can mean to grow sickly or to dwindle away. From this latter meaning we derive the two-syllable peak-ed, for someone who looks pale and wan."
I was so intrigued by the concept, I did a search on the web:
Funny thing was, where Kilpatrick spelled it "contranym" others spell it contronym. My attempts to find a dictionary clarification were zilch. Any help?
02-24-03, 03:50 PM Ewood27 One-Look Dictionaries give one reference for each version, and Google produces search results for both also.
It's a bit of a mongrel word, being a combination of the Latin contra and the Greek -nym. Contra- does change into contro- in other words, e.g. controversy, while -nym derives from the Greek onoma. On that evidence alone my preference (for what that's worth) is for the 'o' version.
Furthermore, following the reference in One-Look Dictionaries brings one to this:
'Eponym is but one of a battalion of words cobbled from -onym, a Greek root that means "word" or "name". Other examples of Nym include acronym, anonymous, antonym, homonym, patronymic, pseudonym, and synonym and the less familiar anatonym, bacronym, charactonym, consonym, domunym, euonym, exonym, malonym, meronym, metonymy, and tautonym.' Later they also mention heteronym. Contronym fits neatly into that family.
02-24-03, 09:02 PM methos I have been told that Richard Lederer coined the term and that he spells it with an o... I emailed him to check on this... I'll let you all know when I get a reply.
02-25-03, 04:41 AM FredPuli Does contrOnym contrAvene a rule of spelling ? The Greek prefix had already been used in 'antonym' so any 'nym' lover had to use the Latin prefix instead to make the new word. A search of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary does not produce any examples of 'contro-' except 'controversy' and the other words having the same origin i.e. the Latin 'controversus' 'turned against; that which is the subject of dispute'This itself was derived from the prefix contra- and 'versus' 'turned'.That word and its relations is the only word in Latin where the prefix is spelled with an O. ContrA , on the other hand ( per contra !), provides all these words where it is used with different verbs to add the meaning 'against'to make a new one viz for 'to speak'; 'to act'; 'to place'; 'to write'; 'to come' and to make a noun (unrelated to them) viz for ' a setting in opposition' and one unrelated adjective for 'against the law'. So the Latin root 'controversus' is controversial; it is unique but the explanation for that is surely that the pronunciation of the word was well established by the time of classical Latin and the spelling followed it then. So we should, I suppose, spell the present word 'contranym'. I expect that is the reason why Oxford spells it so. Other English words in their dictionary ,whether directly derived from the Latin e,g,contradict from contradico or new constructions with Latin origin e.g contraception all have contra.
02-25-03, 05:25 PM Ewood27 A valid argument, Fred. 'Contra' is indeed normally unchanged in compounded words, but on the other hand -nyms are nearly always -onym. The only other -anyms I've found, again in One-Look Dictionaries, are 'ananym' and 'paranym', both listed as obscure. The first couldn't be 'anonym': it's been used. And 'para' is a strongly established prefix in its own right.
Rather weakening my own argument, my 1970 Shorter OED says that 'controversy' comes from the Latin 'controversus' while there is a separate word 'contraversion', rare (Congreve), 'a turning in the opposite direction' from the Latin 'contraversus' with an 'a'.
Which takes etymological precedence, the 'a' of 'contra-' or the 'o' of '-onym'? I still favour the 'o' spelling but accept I may be shown to be wrong.
02-25-03, 06:53 PM methos Well, I emailed Lederer.
I told him that I had heard that he had coined the word and asked his opinion on the matter. He response was simply "I prefer the spelling contronym."
He also included an attachment that doesn't go into the etymology of the word, but discusses cotromyms and is pretty interesting. It's a bit long, so I won't post it here, but if any one is interested, email me and I'll send it to you.
02-25-03, 09:19 PM FredPuli Indeed Ewood, 'contraversus' means 'turned opposite, lying over against'. Lewis and Short's dictionary lists it as post-classical.This rather bears out my suspicion, that controversus 'turned against, in an opposite direction'etc and the words related to it, all with impeccable classic references given, are so spelled because of some long accepted pronunciation.Contra is what would be expected.So controversy's ancestor is unique in Latin.ParOnym exists, one meaning of it is 'a word formed by partial translation of a foreign word'.It seems to be a case of who gets priority, the Romans or the Greeks, in this new marriage, contro /contra nym !
02-26-03, 03:30 AM Ewood27 Methos, I think you've provided the most definitive answer we're going to get. Thank you.
This has been an interesting discussion. Educated Romans spoke Greek because it was a more flexible language than Latin, and I have the feeling that Greek tends to have the upper hand in etymology. How valid is that, though, even if true, in a word coined so recently?
To end on a lighter note, when I searched for *anym* I got loads of results for 'anymore'. Perhaps that would be 'onymair' in Scotland.
03-03-03, 06:09 PM cattywampus Hey Fred, how are things in Newmarket? Do the horses still exercise in the morning fog? What a lovely sight with the sun rising behind them! My friend and I hailed a cab about 2 blocks south of the monument and were taken two blocks north of the monument to the track (exercise yard?). $5.
Wish I was there again...sigh...
Catty Cool
03-04-03, 12:10 PM FredPuli Yes, Catty. They do tours of the National Stud, a training yard, the exercise gallops, the National Horse Racing Museum and so on, too. This is the only town where the horses are more important than the people, and take priority over all traffic, for example, when they walk through or across town to their daily exercise , but then there are just as many of them as us and a good many 'earn'a lot more than we do ( as well as 'employing' a lot of us !) NOTE to Administrator: this post is not some irrelevant, though welcoming, info for an individual ( Catty, say ) but is leading to the question ' is a horse's name an equinym or an equonym?', as I expect you already understood.FP
03-04-03, 03:54 PM Ewood27 Nah. Hipponym.
03-05-03, 04:57 AM FredPuli Neigh, verily.(Does this now complete the circuit, starting from the spelling of a Latin + Greek neologism and ending with that topic ?)
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