Antagonyms

I first posted this discussion of antagonyms as a blog entry, but now it seems I have to keep it up to date. So I am posting it as a story, and will post changes as blog entries.

I don't know what got into me, but I decided to try to determine what to call self-contradicting words, e.g., ravel, cleave, sanction. My wife, Cheryl, and I have enjoyed discussing such words for years. So I went to Google to find out what words have been coined to refer to such words, and it is a mess. Here are the results:

The two front runners appear to be Antagonyms and "contronyms"/"contranyms". (Amphibolous refers to a grammatical construction that can be interpreted in different ways, hence the large number. "Amphibolous words" has few hits.) So I guess I'll go with antagonyms, since there is no confusion as to spelling (i.e., zero Google hits for "antaganyms").

I recently (Christmas 2003) came across "Contradictanym" in Schott's Original Miscellany, a great collection of trivia. The Google hits all refer to his book (so far). Apparently, he has coined his own word for this category.

Here is a list of Web sites with lists or discussions of such words:

http://ccins.camosun.bc.ca/~peterm/venus/contranyms.html
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-553.html
http://graphics.csail.mit.edu/%7Eseth/misc/selfantonyms.html
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/cntrnmys.htm
http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ecellis/antagonym.html
http://thinks.com/words/autoantonyms.htm
http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html
http://www.users.bigpond.com/burnside/contradicting.htm