 Some
words get stretched beyond their elastic limits and lose their strength.
Others, curiously, take on opposite meanings. “Software
Does Not Fail" complains that the word oversight, like cleave,
can cut both ways ("split apart" or "cling together"). As "watchful
care," the word oversight is at its best; meanwhile, as an "unintended
omission," even one oversight can result in disaster. This
observation inspired the author to coin undersight to replace oversight
in contexts where the distinction really matters (commercial
aviation comes first to mind).
Another case in that point...
inflammable adj. 1. Tending to ignite
easily and burn rapidly; flammable. 2. Quickly or easily aroused
to strong emotion; passionate (dare we use the word hot?)
flammable adj. Easily ignitable and capable of
burning with great rapidity; highly combustible; inflammable.
Flammable and inflammable are alike in meaning
and interchangeable in literal usage. One can speak of a flammable
fluid or of an inflammable one, both drawn from the same vessel.
Figuratively, one can refer to an inflammable temperament, but not
to a flammable one. Flammable is especially appropriate where
the term serves as a warning (signage on a tank truck, for example). Flammable
is less susceptible to confusion than inflammable, which is sometimes
mistaken for nonflammable or noncombustible.
The
meanings for canny span all the way from competent (sense
1) through shrewd and prudent (senses 2 and 3) to the gentle
realms owned by words like attractive and steady (sense 5).
Uncanny bumps into canny, not as an opposite (incompetent,
for example) but at an oblique angle, with the meaning of keen and
perceptive -- so much so as to seem preternatural, taking
the usage of uncanny into unearthly territories occupied
by eerie and weird.
-
Unearthly literally means so strange as to suggest
something that is not of this world; in popular usage it is sometimes applied,
like weird, to what is merely exceptionally odd or far
fetched.
-
Eerie describes something that inspires fear, uneasiness,
inspiring wonder that cannot be explained rationally and therefore suggesting
the preternatural or sinister.
-
Weird means mysterious in the sense of occult;
weird
applies to what is bizarre, grotesque,
eccentric,
or markedly unconventional. Adolescent slang has appropriated weird
alongside awesome to signify intense desirability -- a synonym
for whatever the ubiquitous cool is supposed to mean (“That rock
concert was so weird”).
The word uncanny also refers to what is extremely
puzzling,
as in the opening pun, which reports an inconvenient truth discovered by
its author during an unforgettable journey below the streets of the nation's
capital in 1995. |