8. Contronym

Examine the sentence: “Because of the inspector’s oversight, the player’s conduct certificate was sanctioned.” In this sentence, ‘oversight’ means ‘overlook by mistake and ‘sanction’ means approval. Now let’s examine another sentence with ‘oversight’ and ‘sanction’: “The strictures were sanctioned after the oversight tour of human rights commission.” where ‘oversight’ means ‘supervision’ and ‘sanction’ means ‘punitive measures/ penalty/ restriction’. Such words with same spelling and pronunciation (homonyms) but opposite in meanings (antonyms) are called contronyms. More of such Contronyms