Antilogies seem to arise in several ways: First, when words from different sources, bearing different meanings, flow together. As an example, take “cleave”, meaning both to chop apart and to stick together. Its two senses resulted from different Indo-European roots: one gave Old English cleovan, split, while the second led to German kleben, glue together. Another source of antilogies is when a word invokes a general idea that itself carries contrary relationships. “I'm renting my house,” for example, does not specify whether the speaker is lessor or lessee. Many languages have a single expression for both greeting and farewell, such as adios (Mexico) aloha (Hawaii), grüss Gott (Austria), salaam (Arabia), salut (French) and shalom (Hebrew). (These are not necessarily opposite, of course.) Then a word's meaning may evolve into a contrary sense, as elegant from “opulent” (decoration) to “simplest possible” (mathematical solution), or democracy, from Plato's populism to Stalin's dictatorship, or indeed liberal, formerly meaning “opposed to government intervention,” but now, in the U.S., “in favor of government intervention.” Still another source is the invocation of an idea by its opposite. Water Island, Near St. Thomas, is utterly desiccated. Latinists know lucus, which means both “light” and a (dark) “grove:” “lucus because no light,” the poet says. Or see malheur in the text. Freud found these forms typical of the dream-work, and erected a theoretical superstructure on them that bothers philologists.
“Antilogy” remains the preferred term, having been picked up inter alia by the New York Times (in the title and subject of a crossword puzzle) and Harvard magazine; also in London, by The Times and the Daily Telegraph. back
Antilogy [from the Gk. anti, “against” and logia, “speaking”]: A contradiction either in terms or ideas. More generally, antilogy names the basic rhetorical theory (propounded by Protagoras) that two contrary arguments may be given about everything. See in utrumque partes. © 1996-2003, Brigham Young University, Silva Rhetoricae (rhetoric.byu.edu)
