English verb opposites

theprestige said:
Verbs are actions: Run, jump, eat, indoctrinate, etc. Any action that has an opposing or countervailing action will probably have a verb for it in English.
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This is basically it. There's nothing language specific about the fact that some actions have opposites.

And opposites are often contextual. Loss Leader had a good point about 'run'.

The one I was thinking about was 'explode'. What's its opposite? If we're talking about a bomb, the opposite is 'dud' or 'failed' - not 'implode'.
 
Thanks for your responses! Sadly English is my first language, so I'll have to blame a lack of imagination for my failure to come up with these kind of examples. (Or maybe just getting too focussed on pairs to think of something substantially different.)
 
commandlinegamer said:
Cleave.

It doesn't have an opposite, or more correctly, it is its own opposite, in that it can mean to stick to, and to separate.
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Draw (as in curtains) is another good one, meaning to open/close them depending on where they are now.
 
commandlinegamer said:
Cleave.

It doesn't have an opposite, or more correctly, it is its own opposite, in that it can mean to stick to, and to separate.
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Both uses mean the same thing: to cause there to be two things next to each other with little or no space between them. You can cause that effect either by splitting one thing, or by securing two already-separate things together.

GlennB said:
Draw (as in curtains) is another good one, meaning to open/close them depending on where they are now.
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In other words, it means "move them into the other position".

uvar said:
Yeah, that's actually what led me to thinking about this in the first place - there are more of those kind of words than I expected. (http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhatwo.html)
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That's a pretty bad list, misrepresenting almost every entry in one way or another.
 
The etymology of "expedite" is kind of interesting.

expedite: c. 1500 (implied in past participle expedit "accomplished"), from Latin expeditus, past participle of expedire "extricate, disengage, liberate; procure, make ready, put in order, make fit, prepare; explain, make clear," literally "free the feet from fetters," hence to liberate from difficulties, from ex- "out" (see ex-) + *pedis "fetter, chain for the feet," related to pes (genitive pedis) "foot," from PIE root *ped- (1) "a foot" (see foot (n.)).
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And "impede" uses the same root [ped-] for "foot" from Latin.

impede:. 1600, back-formation from impediment, or else from Latin impedire "impede, be in the way, hinder, detain," literally "to shackle the feet" (see impediment).
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"Moot" is a good one. It means either open for discussion or, sort of, not worth discussion.

1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful:
a moot point.
2. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic.
 
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"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."--James Nicoll
 
abaddon said:
Just to complicate things, flammable and inflammable are not opposites.
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I think George Carlin built entire routines on that sort of thing.

I remember one where he pointed out that anything driven around in a car is shipping or freight, but anything transported by ship or freighter is cargo.
 
This sort of thing is what I love about the English language. It's like a magpie, stealing all the colorful and shiny bits of other languages back to its nest to weave in amongst the twigs.

And for all its faults, at least I don't have to remember what gender my aunt's pen is.
 
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