changing antonyms

[Aaron E. Drews]

on 24/5/00 9:01 PM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> Well, "hussy' and "housewife" were synonymous (at one time); now some folks
> would reckon they were antonyms. Hardly canonical.
>

Along the same lines "man" and "wife" (or would that be "were" and "wife"?)
were canonical antonyms in Old English (and still can be in Scots).  Now
it's "husband" ~ "wife" and "man" ~ "woman".

--Aaron


________________________________________________________________________
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron      Departments of English Language and
aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                    Theoretical & Applied Linguistics

 "MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
  --Death