Words With Opposite Meanings

[bednobs]

i was just discussing with a colleague about the word cleave and how it has two opposite meanings depending on context.
Are there any other words like that, and do they have a collective name?

[bobbinwales]

oversee
dust

[Mamyalynne]

Contronym.

[Neveracrossword]

Sanction is another famous one.

[Kardashev]

Yes they are called contronyms.

[Kardashev]

Screen, Trim, Bolt.....etc

[bobbinwales]

Oversight (or overlook) is probly a better one than oversee

[cashier]

Bolt, buckle, bound. Funnily enough Susie Dent, on Countdown,
was talking about this a few weeks ago.

[Kardashev]

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-contronyms-words-with-contradictory-meanings/

[bobbinwales]

quite is a good one.

[Neveracrossword]

There were two fairly recent newspaper crosswords which used these. 'Worst' and 'screen' were in those.

[bednobs]

thanks all

[Peter Pedant]

auto antonym

have we had 'fast' and dyke - no not on a bike.
My Chinese intrpreter disagreed on 'sanction' surprisingly
bending or unbending

Big deal now in computer science and underlying logic. Algos ( geekie word for algorithm) classifying an objaaay in one set or not in one set - fails in words like that. So if you can arithmetise it, then a sorting algo will be bound to have exceptions ( fail ) . Easily understood example of Rice's theorem

[bednobs]

could we get an easily understood version of pedant's postings do you think?

[Atheist]

bednobs; He's like the Bible, puzzling but needs interpretation to understand the deep underlying meaning. It keeps theologists in a job.