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Is there a term for the phenomenon when you can replace one word in a sentence with a typically opposing meaning word and maintain the meaning of the sentence?

Examples:

I'm down for that!
I'm up for that!

or

Slim chance.
Fat chance.

Admittedly, "fat chance" probably originated as a sarcastic derivation of "slim chance", but in practice, they convey the same thing.

This is slightly related to this question, but that one's asking about a specific case (which may or may not fall into the phenomenon I'm asking about). I'm just looking to see if there is an established term I can use to search for more examples.

trejajo
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  • possible duplicate of phrases where opposite words can be used to mean the same thing Also Is there a name for synonyms that appear to have opposite meanings? – FumbleFingers Jan 29 '14 at 04:46
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    @FumbleFingers I this isn't a dupe, the OP is asking what the phenomenon is called. The first Q you linked to is i) closed and ii) asking for other cases like this, and the second is a completely different issue. The OP is asking for is a "literary term", I don't think your false enemies would work (though it is a good name for it). – terdon Jan 29 '14 at 05:36
  • @terdon: Well, auto-antonym was suggested in an answer to Words with opposite meanings in different regions. I think "literary term" here is a bit odd anyway. What actual writer is likely to do this except maybe as feeble wordplay? – FumbleFingers Jan 29 '14 at 06:00
  • @terdon I updated the question and took out the word "literary". I hope that makes more sense. – trejajo Jan 30 '14 at 00:06
  • @FumbleFingers, when I said that I was looking for a literary term, I just meant that I was looking for some coinage or maybe some neologism in the realm of linguistics. I guess instead of literary term, I can use lingustics term from now on. That all-inclusive phrase seems to be the proper category to contain all sorts of concepts like contronyms, false friends, portmanteaus, palindromes, spoonerisms, etc – trejajo Jan 30 '14 at 00:23
  • @ trejajo: oic. Well, if Prof John Lawler happens by this Q, I'm sure he'll have a term that at the very least includes your particular ("slang meaning reversal?") context. I rather doubt it'll be as precise as the other example terms you've just given, simply because those actually have ongoing relevance all the time. Slang usages are always reversing meanings, so the category of "words that can be replaced by other words with apparently opposite meanings" is pretty open-ended (and since slang keeps changing, membership of the category would be fluid, to say the least). – FumbleFingers Jan 30 '14 at 00:30
  • This question is BAD! (Wait! What do I mean by that? Is it not good? Or is it so good it's BAAAAAD?) – bib Jan 30 '14 at 21:06
  • Maybe they are chimerical antonyms. – bib Jan 30 '14 at 21:09
  • "I'm going downtown" vs. "I'm going uptown" There's a question on this somewhere, someplace... – Mari-Lou A Jan 31 '14 at 10:16
  • @Mari-LouA, "Why do Americans go 'downtown' whilst people in the UK go 'up town'?" notes that downtown and uptown suggest two distinctly different areas in a place like New York City. Though, it's probably much more useful for the denizens of that city (since NYC is so large) to have two casual terms that serve to identify two relatively disjoint chunks of the city. For what it's worth, they also have midtown. – trejajo Jan 31 '14 at 19:29
  • @Mari-LouA, having said that, I think in most (i.e. smaller than NYC) US cities, if you approached a person and used the word uptown instead of downtown , they might snicker a little or wonder if you were from around there, but they would generally know what you meant. – trejajo Jan 31 '14 at 19:33

2 Answers2

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Words that have opposite meanings depending on context are called contranyms; Janus words, from the Roman god of doors between beginnings and ends. It's not exactly what you're looking for, but the term might get you on the right path.

But I'd guess most examples include neologisms — new colloquialisms we may use but might not be widely "accepted" yet, like "sick" meaning an awesome new DLC for a staid game, where the word ("sick") also retains it's everyday meaning of "not well". The neologism ("sick" with a positive connotation) is then combined with an antonym for the original word's meaning (antonym of "sick", like "healthy"), to produce the effect the OP is asking for: neologism[word] + antonym[word].

St Cecilias Girl
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  • This is quite lengthy but the only thing you really needed to share was the term contranym. The rest should just be reformatted to fit a question-answer format. – virmaior Feb 08 '14 at 13:55
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    Contranym (or auto-antonym) was already listed in previous comments and it doesn't quite answer the question here. – brandonjsmith Feb 08 '14 at 18:46
  • @brandonjsmith, I added the neologism part back, but hopefully left the response less wordy than the original. – St Cecilias Girl Feb 09 '14 at 20:21
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Great question! I was looking through the list of *nym words trying to find one that might fit. I don't know of an existing word for this, but when I started thinking about it, I realized that it is a special type of synonym (because it's a word or phrase that means the same thing as another). But it's special because the phrases have antonyms within them. So if I had to make up a word for this, I'd probably call it:

synantonymonym

It's an antonym within a synonym! But since saying "an antonym within a synonym" is not a single word, I'd say synantonymonym (syn - ant - o - nym - o - nym). Pronounced: sɪn ænt ə nɪm ə nɪm.

What do you think, does this work?

brandonjsmith
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  • Hahaha *nym-ception! – trejajo Jan 31 '14 at 19:36
  • Points for creativity. It's also fun to say. I also don't know if there's an exact word that might fit the question, but I figured here was a good place to ask. If this word gets the critical mass of enough people upvoting, I may have to accept it based on the Principle of the People's Choice, which was just made up as I was typing this sentence. – trejajo Jan 31 '14 at 19:40