Date: Fri, 5 May 1995 09:30:03 EDT

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU

Subject: Re: negatives and positives



First, apologies to David Muschell, whose earlier reference to the New Yorker

piece I evidently tected. But let me also ward off any sequels to his citation

of words that have antithetical meanings. This topic has been unofficially

crowned "Longest Running Thread" on Linguist List (we also talked about it here

a while back, as I recall). Anyone interested in the 30 or so separate

collections of postings to Linguist of what I call antilogies but others call

variously "auto-antonyms" or (in what became the standard header) "Words That

Are Their Own Opposites" can check out the Linguist List archives for the

period from November '94 (when Alex Eulenberg first posted the query) to April

10. PLEASE, everyone, for the sake of those of us who trawl both Linguist and

ads, let's NOT start posting on this again here (he mutters under his breath)

...



Larry