Going to a quiz every so often is a great way to have fun with friends. But one surprising quiz round made me change the way I think about the English language. 

之前有一次和朋友玩“猜詞兒”游戲，簡直打開了我對英語的“新世界大門”。

The theme of the round was contronyms (反義同形詞) ‑ words that have contradictory (對立的) meanings.

游戲主題是“反義同形詞”——就是那種，明明是同一個單詞，卻有截然不同的含義。

The English word “dust” is one of the examples. Dust can mean to clean up the house and remove dirt as well as mean to add powder (粉末) to something, such as covering a cake with sugar.

英文單詞“dust”就是一個例子。作動詞，它可以表達“清掃、撣土”也可以表示往某物上撒粉末，比如在蛋糕上撒糖。

The reason for this phenomenon is the complex cultural history of the English language. Sometimes the connotation (內(nèi)涵意義) and “feeling” of a word changes over time as society uses the word more often, for example from positive to negative, according to The Economist. When this new meaning appears alongside the word’s original meaning, you have a contronym. 

到底為啥會有這種“復雜的詞匯”呢？詞匯所表達的意思，可能會隨著大家實際運用的語境而改變。詞義從積極的變成消極的也不是沒可能。當這個詞新的含義和它原先的含義并存時，就形成了反義同形詞。

So that also reminds us of the important factor ‑ context. Can you think of any other contronyms in English or even Chinese? 

那怎么才能“拿捏”詞義呢？上下文語境才是最重要的！其實這種語言現(xiàn)象，中英文都有，你還能想到哪些呢？