Words ending in –phobia. http://phobialist.com/
Contronyms, that is to say, words with two directly opposite meanings (such as “dust,” to remove dust from a surface, and “dust,” to spread dust over a surface). http://www.rinkworks.com/words/contronyms.shtml
http://www.askoxford.com/wordgames/wordchallenge/contronyms/
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/cntrnmys.htm
I once read somewhere that the philosopher Hegel believed that all words are contronyms. I’ve never gotten around to looking that up to see whether he actually said that, what he meant by it if he did say it, what influence his idea (whatever it was) may have had on the theory of language, or whether it is true. But it’s an interesting notion, I think.
Unrelated picture:
acilius
believer1
lefalcon
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
Panther Red 
lefalcon
/ April 29, 2008All words mean their diametric opposite, in addition to what they normally mean? It’s a cool-sounding notion..but how could it possibly be true? There is a verb in Arabic that can mean ‘to love’ or ‘to hate,’ depending on the preposition that follows it. 90% of the time when people talk about some really ‘weird’ feature in a foreign language, it turns out that, if you’re familiar with the mechanics of that language, that feature doesn’t seem very strange. However, the Arabic verb I just mentioned really is strange, because Arabic words don’t normally have two possible meanings in radical opposition like that. However I have noticed that (at least according to a certain dictionary) an alarming number of words can mean “excrement” or “a young man,” in addition to their more common meaning. I’m not entirely joking.
acilius
/ April 29, 2008Contronymity interests me. I don’t see how Hegel could be right, but then I’ve never actually read his full argument.