I’m fascinated by words and phrases whose form is the opposite of their meaning. Sort of like an oxymoron, but on a meta-level.
One example that comes to mind is “to noun” — a term that describes the process of turning a verb into a noun. For example, an archeological dig, a witch hunt, a clam bake, are all examples of a verb being repurposed to serve as a noun.
They have all been nouned. Yet “to noun” is itself an example of a noun that has been repurposed to serve as a verb — exactly the opposite of nouning (I guess you could say it has been verbed).
What should we call these examples of the form of a word or phrase suggesting the opposite of its meaning, such as “breviloquent”, or “eschew obfuscation”?
I’m open to suggestions.
Angloverb. Literally “English word,” but the word itself is in Latin.
Not that I have an answer (or a suggestion), but along a somewhat but not at all parallel direction, tonight while I was making dinner I wondered out loud “how did ‘hardly’ happen”? How did the adverbial form of “hard” come to mean “scarce” or “barely” rather than a description of firm density?
I will be watching this thread with bated breath.