One of the things that makes English especially hard is the fact that there are words that have different meanings and are used in different contexts,
but they actually come from the same roots.
The contrary is going to create confusion that you don't understand,
which is being asked, and that's what's sort of beautiful and frustrating about it.
Coming up on Word Matters,
when a word is its own opposite and a pair of intertwined, commonly confused words.
When you hear that the language is up to something illogical,
like letting a word mean one thing and the exact opposite of that one thing, what do you do?
Do you cleave to your opinion, that is, adhere to it tightly?
Or do you let the new information cleave your previous conception of the language in two,
that is, split it?
Here's Neal Servan with the story of Janus words.
English is clever.
It can also be very confusing, frustrating.
Create confusion just for the sake of creating confusion.
We have these words that can sometimes mean one thing, sometimes mean another,
and sometimes they can mean two things that seem completely opposite.
We have a word like sanction.
The word sanction can mean to allow something,
or it can mean to penalize someone like you're sanctioned by the government,