Chinese would like a word
Comment on What's the weirdest thing in english?
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
One I always find weird is how often we reuse the exact same word with the same spelling and pronunciation to mean wildly different things. For example, the word ‘jam’ can mean:
- a fruit preserve
- to play music
- heavy traffic
- a door that won’t open
- to cram something into something else
- a difficult situation
Or ‘saw’, which can be to look at something in the past tense or to cut wood. The word ‘run’ apparently has over 600 different meanings!
We also have contronyms, which is when a word also means the opposite of itself. For example ‘dust’, which can mean to add dust or remove it. Or ‘left’, which can mean remaining (“I only have three left”) or departing (“They left.”)
qevlarr@lemmy.world 5 days ago
crapwittyname@feddit.uk 5 days ago
I remember my English teacher telling me the word “set” was the worst example of this, with over 200 definitions in the unabridged Oxford dictionary.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Or ‘left’, which can mean remaining (“I only have three left”) or departing (“They left.”)
I remember learning Spanish in school. Discovering the difference between “dejar” and “irse” drove this home for me. Dejar - to leave [a thing somewhere.] Irse - to leave [a place.] (“Salir” also works for the latter meaning, but it can mean more of “to go out.”)
“Ella se fue y dejó el libro en la mesa” (“She left and left the book on the table.”)
Speaking of “driving (a point) home,” I’d say one of the weirdest/most interesting quirks of English is how many idioms we rely on.
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 5 days ago
A door can get jammed on the door jamb