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What is the term when a phrase means just the opposite of what it used to mean?

English Language & Usage Asked by leon pendleton on June 21, 2021

‘At glacial speed’ used to mean something that went very slowly, but with global warming, the glaciers are retreating at a much greater and increasingly faster rate. What is the term that describes this change in phrase usage?

2 Answers

For phrases, I'm not sure I've heard one specifically.

But for single words, like peruse, quite, cleave, I generally see the term contranym and auto-antonym. Wikipedia has a gigantic list of other terms*, but those are the two that I think will be most readily understood.

* antagonym, Janus word , enantiodrome, self-antonym, antilogy, addad, contronym, autantonym

Answered by user0721090601 on June 21, 2021

In its blog, Oxford Dictionaries use the term "Shifted Meanings".

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/?s=shifted

Whilst this term can be used for any change in word meaning, it does include words like "egregious", which has become its own opposite:

"Remarkably good" to "remarkably bad".

Answered by Ste on June 21, 2021

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