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Replies

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 19/03/2026

English is *full* of these words that mean their own opposite, from "dust" to "oversight" to "weather": www.mentalfloss.com/language/wor... This is what you get when you let a language *run wild*, with meaning determined (and contested) by speakers. 4/

mentalfloss.com

40 Words and Phrases That Are Their Own Opposites

You're about to stumble into the looking-glass world of contronyms—words that are their own antonyms.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 19/03/2026

Not for nothing, my second language is Yiddish, another glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of a tongue with no authoritative oversight and innumerable dialects. Semantic drift is a feature, not a bug. It's how we get new words, and new meanings for old words. I love semantic drift! 5/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 19/03/2026

I mean, I'd better. Having coined "enshittification," I'm now destined to have a poop emoji on my headstone. Having coined a word - and having proposed a precise technical meaning for it - I am baffled by people who make it their business to scold others for using enshittification "incorrectly." 6/

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