Ready to Root
April 20, 2013
My theme for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is contronyms, which is a word with two or more opposite meanings, making it its own antonym. Click here to find out more about these quirky words.
 
Molly with the letter RThere are a lot of R contronyms on the various lists, but I think some of them are practically cheating. Some previous words on the lists have kind of twisted and stretched the definitions in order to make them contronyms, but several of these examples barely qualify as the same word because they are just adding ‘re’ to the front of other words. For example: release (let go) versus re-lease (hold on to) and resign (quit a contract) versus re-sign (sign a contract again). There were a few more like these, and I don’t really think they count. So for my featured R contronym, I picked one that truly has opposite meanings: root.
 
Root – to implant or establish deeply
 
~ or ~
 
Root – to pull up or remove completely
 
Diana rooted a cutting from her grandmother’s prized rose bush in order to always have a reminder of the woman’s gentle soul . . .
Planting a seedling
. . . but tenacious weeds threatened to overwhelm the fragile planting, so Diana rooted out the interlopers in a vicious frenzy of curse words and dripping sweat.
Pulling a weed
 
And with the events of the past week, I thought I’d add one on a more serious note.
 
Sometimes evil roots itself into the hearts and minds of petty people, and that’s when brave men and women step forward to help root evil from society, whether it’s by heroically putting themselves in the path of danger or performing acts of kindness that remind us of the true human spirit.
Tree with heart roots
 
Are you familiar with contronyms? Can you think of examples of other ‘R’ contronyms? How Relaxed is Molly with her letter R?
 

Planting seedling image courtesy of domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pulling weed image courtesy of domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tree-heart image courtesy of Archipoch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My theme for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is contronyms, which is a word with two or more opposite meanings, making it its own antonym. Click here to find out more about these quirky words.
 
Molly with the letter RThere are a lot of R contronyms on the various lists, but I think some of them are practically cheating. Some previous words on the lists have kind of twisted and stretched the definitions in order to make them contronyms, but several of these examples barely qualify as the same word because they are just adding ‘re’ to the front of other words. For example: release (let go) versus re-lease (hold on to) and resign (quit a contract) versus re-sign (sign a contract again). There were a few more like these, and I don’t really think they count. So for my featured R contronym, I picked one that truly has opposite meanings: root.
 
Root – to implant or establish deeply
 
~ or ~
 
Root – to pull up or remove completely
 
Diana rooted a cutting from her grandmother’s prized rose bush in order to always have a reminder of the woman’s gentle soul . . .
Planting a seedling
. . . but tenacious weeds threatened to overwhelm the fragile planting, so Diana rooted out the interlopers in a vicious frenzy of curse words and dripping sweat.
Pulling a weed
 
And with the events of the past week, I thought I’d add one on a more serious note.
 
Sometimes evil roots itself into the hearts and minds of petty people, and that’s when brave men and women step forward to help root evil from society, whether it’s by heroically putting themselves in the path of danger or performing acts of kindness that remind us of the true human spirit.
Tree with heart roots
 
Are you familiar with contronyms? Can you think of examples of other ‘R’ contronyms? How Relaxed is Molly with her letter R?
 

Planting seedling image courtesy of domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pulling weed image courtesy of domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tree-heart image courtesy of Archipoch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Jocelyn Rish

Jocelyn Rish is a writer and filmmaker who never imagined her cheeky sense of humor would lead to a book about animal butts. When she's not researching fanny facts, she tutors kids to help them discover the magic of reading. Jocelyn has won numerous awards for her short stories, screenplays, short films, and novels and lives in South Carolina with her booty-ful dogs.