Running Bear came in from a cycle run one day and said he had a slow puncture. “It kept deflating, and I had to keep flating it back up.” It took us a moment to work out what was wrong with that sentence.
What an amazing coincidence you should bring this up!
About a month ago this same thought struck me and I began collecting a list; with the intent of writing a blog post or some other “published” form of these.
Here is my draft notes on the subject:
There is no Opposite
These are words in the English language that simply have no antonym.
I am unable to recall or locate a word that directly opposes any of these.
For example, you cannot untell something. References to and “Untold Story” mean it has never been told. But, the act of telling cannot be reversed.
Off-topic, but I still don’t know how to copy someone’s text above and have it highlight in grey. (grr! newbie)
Anyway, today we were talking about someone who used a wingsuit to glide down from like 5,000 feet. But that was in the past. Is the past of glide glid? He glid down? I love english language. It is so jacked up!
I just highlighted this text in your message. When I let up off the click, a message saying “Quote Text” appeared… I clicked it, and it opened a new edit dialog with your text in quotes.
Use j and k to move down or up through a topic, and when you reach the one you want to quote, press q. That quotes the entire post, but you can, of course, edit it in the reply box.
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day.
"In English", he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative".
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right".