A true snoot in every sense of the made-up word, I’ve always been fascinated by the ways opposites manifest themselves in language.
I remember being a mentally restless third-grader tormented by the fact that one could never truly declare that it’s Opposite Day. Think about it: if it’s Opposite Day, one’s saying so would mean that it’s not; and saying it isn’t would mean that it’s just another ordinary day. (I obviously had no knowledge of infinite regresses at the time.) But recently I’ve wasted much time and energy pondering self-contained opposites in language (ie semantic paradoxes; ie contradictio in terminis; ie a category of terms that mean – or are used to mean – two contradictory things). Let’s call them “grammarians’ contrarians”.
