Yesterday’s Uplift post at ROAMcare revolved around the word “common.” A comment had us thinking about how the meanings of words change. I thought about that a little more on my own and I was amazed at the number of words that once meant one thing now have little and sometimes no resemblance to their original meanings. I was also somewhat aghast at the temerity of humans to play willy nilly with established norms – although, at least with words, the norm established was established by humans so I guess humans can do what they want with them. It’s not like anybody is trying to change science. (People holding high government offices in Washington notwithstanding, given that I’m not so sure they are actually human anyway.)

Some words haven’t quite yet made that complete flip, or flop if you prefer, and carry two meanings opposite each other. Oversight can mean examining for inconsistencies from expectations or the inconsistency itself. These are called contranyms. My favorite contranym is Handicap. – An advantage provided to ensure equality (think golf), or a disadvantage that prevents equal achievement. (Why is this my favorite? Because I am. I have a handicap. Because of reasons too abstruse to go into here, I walk with a cane. It may look cool and all swaggerish, but every time I need to carry or hold something I am limited to only one-half of my carrying and/or holding appendages. People want to call all those with handicaps disabled but we are just as able as anyone else, perhaps more so due to our handicaps, whihch might make that a contranym within a contranym.)

Other common contranyms are model (an exemplary original or a scaled copy), puzzle (a problem or to solve one), and for out baseball fans, strike (to hit or to miss).

And then there are the antagonyms, words that have completely changed meanings over time. Awful is a classic example of a word today meaning the opposite of what it was meant to be. Five hundred years ago a bully was more of a heartthrob, one of outstanding physical prowess. Now it means fake president of a used to be major power. Prestigious, as in renown, has only been a positive example for the last hundred years or so. Before that, a prestigious someone was an imposter who gained wealth by way of trickery (sort of like…oh, never mind).

But back to “common.” I’m not sure where that fits in. everyone’s first definition is something generally met with and of nothing special. But its root is the same as community and it is used to described things shared, like a common border. Or as we wrote in that post, a common good, and even common sense, which most people want to ascribe to individuals but really is knowledge derived from shared experiences. Take a look at it. We think it is uncommonly good.