Temper Tantrum
April 23, 2013
My theme for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is contronyms. A contronym is a word with two or more opposite meanings, making it its own antonym. Click here to find out more about these quirky words.
 
Bailey with the letter TSimimlar to buckle, the contronym I'm featuring today has so many definitions that there actually ends up being two pairs of opposing definitions. So what is this über-contronym? Temper.
 
Temper – calmness of mind; composure [calm]
 
~ or ~
 
Temper – heat of mind or emotion; proneness to anger [angry]
 
— and —
 
Temper – to dilute, qualify, or soften by the addition or influence of something else [to soften]
 
~ or ~
 
Temper – to harden (as steel) by reheating and cooling in oil [to harden]
 
In the short clip below, you could say the man needs to temper his temper because the tempered metal making up the computer has a temper than will not be ruffled by him.
 
Okay, that was a pretty bad example, but I was trying to fit all variations in one sentence. Hope you are having better day than this gentleman:
 
Are you familiar with contronyms? Can you think of examples of other ‘T’ contronyms? How Tuckered out is Bailey with her letter T?
My theme for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is contronyms. A contronym is a word with two or more opposite meanings, making it its own antonym. Click here to find out more about these quirky words.
 
Bailey with the letter TSimimlar to buckle, the contronym I'm featuring today has so many definitions that there actually ends up being two pairs of opposing definitions. So what is this über-contronym? Temper.
 
Temper – calmness of mind; composure [calm]
 
~ or ~
 
Temper – heat of mind or emotion; proneness to anger [angry]
 
— and —
 
Temper – to dilute, qualify, or soften by the addition or influence of something else [to soften]
 
~ or ~
 
Temper – to harden (as steel) by reheating and cooling in oil [to harden]
 
In the short clip below, you could say the man needs to temper his temper because the tempered metal making up the computer has a temper than will not be ruffled by him.
 
Okay, that was a pretty bad example, but I was trying to fit all variations in one sentence. Hope you are having better day than this gentleman:
 
Are you familiar with contronyms? Can you think of examples of other ‘T’ contronyms? How Tuckered out is Bailey with her letter T?

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.