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Comment by jffry | Hacker News Reader

Sanction is such a strange word. It can mean both "giving permission or approval" as well as "giving a penalty for noncompliance with a rule or law"

I also misread the headline as the latter instead of the former, likely because of the latter type of sanctions being in the news as of late.

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Ah! Contronyms! Words that can mean a thing... and it's opposite (or nearly so).

Dust, cleave, overlook... many others. One of those enjoyable corners of the language.

Weird quirks of language (English and others) usually have interesting histories too.

For anyone else that was confused, apparently there is an alternate usage of the word 'Cleave' that means 'to adhere' (rather than 'to cut' or 'to separate').[0]

I hadn't heard of that one.

[0] https://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-contronyms-words-with-co...

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cleave#:~:text=De...

I almost feel like that specific usage should come with the 'archaic' tag, but it's reasonably common in slightly older novels, I think? Things like "He still cleaves to the imagined ideals of his forefathers".

It definitely tends to be used in a more philosophical sense than the very physical "cleave a block of wood in two", though.

The Amelia Bedelia series of children's books get tons of mileage from these types of words.

"Biweekly" is a good one (half as often as weekly, but also twice as often as weekly).

You've mooted a very good point. The English language is full of contradictions and condones many deceptive spellings.

All totally correct. Thanks for commenting.

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