FW: Same sound, opposite meaning

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:51 PM -0400 5/8/02, Frank Abate wrote:
>In reply to Erin M's posting, Lynne M commented:
>
>--On Wednesday, May 8, 2002 8:57 am -0500 Erin McKean
><editor at VERBATIMMAG.COM> wrote:
>
>>  There's an article in the most recent VERBATIM about these things,
>>  also called "janus words."
>>
>>  Erin McKean
>>  editor at verbatimmag.com
>>
>>>  Is there an official term for homophonic words that have the opposite (or
>>>  nearly the opposite) meanings? For example: raise and raze.
>
>But 'raise' and 'raze' aren't Janus words in the usual sense, since they're
>not spelt the same.
>
>************************
>
>A classic example is "cleave": 'to cut something into separate pieces' and
>'to cling to tightly'.  Similar is "hew" 'cut' and "hew to" 'adhere to'.
>
>Frank Abate

The last time we had this thread, Lynne and I settled on
"enantiosemy" as the label of choice for this phenomenon.  (I'd gone
with "antinomy" before then.)

Larry