Words and their opposites

Someone once said (apparently intending no offense) about Arabic:

" In Arabic, a word means what it means, it means its opposite, and it means something about a camel."

That this kind of a statement can be made about Arabic has something to do with its long history of use. But this kind of "Semitic semantics" has been noted for ancient Hebrew(s) as well. One of the most famous examples is בוא ("come, go"). But other terms could easily be added to the list (especially verbs of motion, like שׁוב - "turn, return," sometimes seemingly "go on").

And if we think about it, this phenomenon is not unknown in other languages, even English:

1. Cleave (cut apart, join together). These are homonyms, proven by the different conjugations (cleave/cleaved/cleaved; cleave/cleft/cloven). But in the present tense they are only distinguished by context.

2. Sanction. This can be good (award) or bad (penalty) depending on context.

3. Cite. This can be neutral/positive as in a bibliography, or negative as in a traffic citation.

Children acquiring language will sometimes experiment with the possibilities of terminological breadth before settling down to agreed-upon semantic specificity: e.g. "Daddy will you sell (buy) me an ice cream?"

This phenomenon should remind of of how fragile our linguistic negotiation is, and how embedded it is in the context of our social interactions.