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Apr 12, 2004

This week's theme
Contranyms

This week's words
chuffed
sententious
endsville
excrescence
simon-pure

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A Word A Day
the book "Delightful."
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To cleave is to cling or to split? Ravel is to tangle or to untangle? When you sanction a project, do you approve or disapprove of it?

When a proposal is tabled, is it being brought forward for discussion or being laid aside? In this case, it depends on which side of the Atlantic you live. It's the former in UK, the latter in the US.

Should one be commended for oversight (watchful care) or reprimanded for oversight (error or omission)?

When you resign from a job, do you leave it or re-join (re-sign!) it? (OK, that last one was a stretch.)

Sometimes it's a result of two distinct words evolving into the same form (cleave from Old English cleofian and cleofan) but often a single word develops a split personality and takes on two contradictory senses. All of us have a bit of yin and yang and these words are no exception. The context usually provides a clue to help us understand the right sense in a given place. Look for more such words in AWAD this week.

chuffed

chuffed (chuft) adjective

Pleased; satisfied.

[From English dialect chuff (pleased, puffed, swollen with pride).]

Displeased; annoyed.

[From chuff (boor, churl), from Middle English chuffe.]

"And she was a little chuffed at Elliot's infamous plug for Harvie's SBS screening while accepting his Oscar on stage in Los Angeles."
When Oscar Met Harvie; Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia); Mar 12, 2004.

"The former England midfielder told Sky Sports News, 'We should not have been here, we should have won the game at our place but we're here, we've done well and I'm just chuffed to bits.'"
Millwall Down Tranmere to Set Up Clash With Sunderland in Semi; The Star (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); Mar 18, 2004.

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