Contronyms are special cases of homographs (two words with the same spelling). Some examples:

• anabasis - military advance, military retreat
• apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do
• aught - all, nothing
• bolt - secure, run away
• by - multiplication (e.g., a three by five matrix), division (e.g., dividing eight by four)
• chuffed - pleased, annoyed
• cleave - separate, adhere
• clip - fasten, detach
• consult - ask for advice, give advice
• copemate - partner, antagonist
• custom - usual, special
• deceptively smart - smarter than one appears, dumber than one appears
• dike - wall, ditch
• discursive - proceeding coherently from topic to topic, moving aimlessly from topic to topic
• dollop - a large amount, a small amount
• dust - add fine particles, remove fine particles
• enjoin - prescribe, prohibit
• fast - quick, unmoving
• first degree - most severe (e.g., murder), least severe (e.g., burn)
• fix - restore, castrate
• flog - criticize harshly, promote aggressively
• garnish - enhance (e.g., food), curtail (e.g., wages)
• give out - produce, stop production
• grade - incline, level
• handicap - advantage, disadvantage
• help - assist, prevent (e.g., “I can’t help it if…”)
• left - remaining, departed from
• liege - sovereign lord, loyal subject
• mean - average, excellent (e.g., “plays a mean game”)
• off - off, on (e.g., “the alarm went off”)
• out - visible (e.g., stars), invisible (e.g., lights)
• out of - outside, inside (e.g., “work out of one’s home”)
• oversight - error, care
• pitted - with the pit in, with the pit removed
• put out - extinguish, generate (e.g., something putting out light)
• quiddity - essence, trifling point
• quite - rather, completely
• ravel - tangle, disentangle
• rent - buy use of, sell use of
• rinky-dink - insignificant, one who frequents RinkWorks
• sanction - approve, boycott
• sanguine - hopeful, murderous (obsolete synonym for “sanguinary”)
• screen - show, hide
• seed - add seeds (e.g., “to seed a field”), remove seeds (e.g., “to seed a tomato”)
• skinned - with the skin on, with the skin removed
• strike - hit, miss (in baseball)
• table - propose (in the United Kingdom), set aside (in the United States)
• transparent - invisible, obvious
• unbending - rigid, relaxing
• variety - one type (e.g., “this variety”), many types (e.g., “a variety”)
• wear - endure through use, decay through use
• weather - withstand, wear away
• wind up - end, start up (e.g., a watch)
• with - alongside, against

“Farmers have known for some time that uncastrated male pigs can produce meat with a strong odor, so most commercially raised animals in the U.S. are castrated to get rid of the smell, which is known as boar taint.”

vom.com

(h/t)

“Mr Sarkozy, repeatedly accusing Mr Hollande of lying about the state of the economy and his policy proposals, said: ‘In your determination to prove the unprovable, you lie.’ Mr Hollande spat back: ‘You are incapable of making an argument without being unpleasant.’”

lol

• time 
• person 
• year 
• way 
• day 
• thing 
• man 
• world 
• life 
• hand

“Southpaw, Park Slope’s biggest and grittiest music venue, will close at the end of the month. It will be replaced by the eighth franchise of the New York Kids Club, a ‘children’s enrichment center’ that offers cooking and rock-climbing classes for toddlers.”

“Burn Note enables you to communicate online as privately as a phone call or a spoken conversation. It does this by completely deleting all Burn Notes after they have been read and by using encryption end-to-end for security.

Unlike other online services where your communication is stored and traceable, Burn Notes leave no trace online or on your computer. Our service securely deletes the contents of Burn Notes from our servers and from the phones and computers that send and receive them.

All communication on Burn Note can be viewed only once. Burn Notes are destroyed immediately after they have been viewed by the recipient and completely extinguished from the Burn Note servers. Burn Notes are never stored in the recipient’s email and once read it is impossible for anyone to retrieve them.”

“A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

‘This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,’ Jordan said today from his Waterford home. ‘I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.’

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.”

1. Hurricane Irene
2. Occupy
3. Japan Earthquake
4. iPhone 5
5. iPad 2
6. Libya
7. Osama Bin Laden
8. Egypt 
9. Casey Anthony

“This democratization of culture and style has two very different but highly complementary results. On the one hand, in a country where an adorably huge majority have always considered themselves ‘middle class,’ practically everyone who can afford it now shops stylishly—at Gap, Target, Ikea, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Barnes & Noble, and Starbucks. Americans: all the same, all kind of cool! And yet, on the other hand, for the first time, anyone anywhere with any arcane cultural taste can now indulge it easily and fully online, clicking themselves deep into whatever curious little niche they wish. Americans: quirky, independent individualists!

We seem to have trapped ourselves in a vicious cycle—economic progress and innovation stagnated, except in information technology; which leads us to embrace the past and turn the present into a pleasantly eclectic for-profit museum; which deprives the cultures of innovation of the fuel they need to conjure genuinely new ideas and forms; which deters radical change, reinforcing the economic (and political) stagnation. I’ve been a big believer in historical pendulum swings—American sociopolitical cycles that tend to last, according to historians, about 30 years. So maybe we are coming to the end of this cultural era of the Same Old Same Old. As the baby-boomers who brought about this ice age finally shuffle off, maybe America and the rich world are on the verge of a cascade of the wildly new and insanely great. Or maybe, I worry some days, this is the way that Western civilization declines, not with a bang but with a long, nostalgic whimper.”

• A heard of harlots
• A bevy of ladies
• A riches of matrons
• A gaggle of women
• A nonpatience of wives
• A multiply of husbands
• A rout of knights
• A host of soldiers
• A host of men
• A fellowship of yeomen
• A state of princes
• A thought of barons
• A congregation of people
• A prudence of vicaries
• A superfluity of nuns
• A school of clerics
• A converting of preachers
• A scull of friars
• An abominable sight of monks
• An example of martyrs
• An observance of hermits
• A pontifica of prelates
• A dignity of canons
• A charge of curates
• A discretion of priests
• A disworhip of scots
• A doctrine of doctors
• A sentence of judges
• A damning of jurors
• An eloquence of lawyers
• A rascal of boys
• A blush of boys
• An obesiance of servants
• A draught of butlers
• A proud showing of tailors
• A temperance of cooks
• A stalk of fosters
• A laughter of ostlers
• A glossing of taverners
• A malepertness of peddlers
• A thrave of threshers
• A squat of dawbers
• A fighting of beggars
• A seat of ushers
• An untruth of sumners
• A melody of harpers
• A poverty of pipers
• A tabernacle of bakers
• A disguising of tailors
• A bleach of souters
• A smear of curriers
• A cluster of churls
• An Incredibility of cuckolds
• A faith of merchants
• A provision of stewards of houses
• A credence of sewers
• An embruing of carvers
• A blast of hunters
• A safeguard of porters
• A threatening of courteours
• A lying of pardoners
• A misbelieve of painters
• A lath of carters
• A scolding of gamesters
• A wandering of tinkers
• A worship of writers
• A never thriving of jugglers
• A feast of brewers
• A goring of butchers
• A drunken ship of cobblers

1. US Dept. of Defense 
2. Chinese People’s Liberation Army
3. Walmart*
4. McDonalds*
5. China National Petroleum Corp. 
6. State Grid Corp. of China
7. National Health Service (England)
8. Indian Railways 
9. China Post Group
10. Hon Hai Precision Industry*

*indicates private company