{"id":410,"date":"2009-09-28T09:27:50","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T09:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=410"},"modified":"2009-10-13T13:40:21","modified_gmt":"2009-10-13T13:40:21","slug":"phantonyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/28\/phantonyms\/","title":{"rendered":"Phantonyms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Phantom-mask.jpg\" alt=\"Phantom mask\" title=\"Phantom mask\" width=\"134\" height=\"125\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-411\" \/>I came across an interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/09\/27\/magazine\/27FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=1\">article<\/a> in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.com\/\">New York Times<\/a> about words that look as though they mean one thing but mean another \u2013 the author suggested they be named <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/grammar.about.com\/od\/pq\/g\/phantonymterm.htm\">phantonyms<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>These words crop up so often in the English language that their \u2018new\u2019 meanings are becoming more and more accepted. Here are some examples from the article:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/disinterested\">Disinterested <\/a>is occasionally used as if it means uninterested \u2014 indifferent or bored. For example, a Times article in February 2008 described Senator Joseph Lieberman as \u201cso disinterested in the Democratic presidential candidates\u201d that he didn\u2019t vote in the primary. Nine out of 10 American Heritage Dictionary authorities would reject that usage. The favored definition is unbiased or impartial, as in Adam Liptak\u2019s article in The Times in March 2008 about foreign judges: \u201cPunishments, they say, should be meted out only by the criminal justice system . . . and disinterested prosecutors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/enervated\">Enervated<\/a>. Appearances can be deceiving, as when an NPR commentator described the men fighting a fire in Nevada as tired but enervated by their progress. The word, a phantonym of energized, in fact means weakened.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/fortuitous\">Fortuitous<\/a> looks like lucky, as it did to an official at N.Y.U. when Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accepted an appointment as a professor: \u201cIt was so fortuitous,\u201d she said. But the word means \u201chappening by chance,\u201d says The Times\u2019s Manual of Style and Usage. \u201cIt does not mean fortunate.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Can you think of any other phantonyms?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came across an interesting article in the New York Times about words that look as though they mean one thing but mean another \u2013 the author suggested they be named phantonyms. These words crop up so often in the English language that their \u2018new\u2019 meanings are becoming more and more accepted. Here are some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,45,40,44],"tags":[268,51,167,267,265,266],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language-acquisition","category-words","tag-article","tag-language","tag-language-usage","tag-new-york-times","tag-phantom","tag-phantonym"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}