Subject: re : 6 . 381 words that are their own opposites

several people submitted " overlook " and " oversight " , which are fine examples of this phenomenon in english ( though i think that mary neff 's " outgoing : retiring " is perhaps the most elegant submission to date . ) perhaps my current work on the various shades of meaning in english prepositions has biased me , but in any case i think that the difference in the various senses of " oversight " and " overlook " stems largely from their compounding with " over - " . " over " is sneaky ; at first glance it seems to be fairly limited in expressive power , but deeper analysis reveals that in it lurk a number of distinctions of meaning , some of them quite subtle indeed . in addition to nuances of physical location , " over " can indicate power relationships ( both outright force , and more subtle authority ) , value judgements , and the general notion of ( metaphorically ) moving on to another thing , as in " get over it " and " skip over " . so my analysis of " oversight " and " overlook " would be that in one sense , " over " takes on the meaning of authority-over , and in the other sense it takes on the meaning of skipping-over . perhaps a similar argument could be make for the " sight / see / look " part of the compound ? for instance , useages such as " see to it " " look to your own interest " seem to carry some of this " authority " meaning . i think the " over " analysis is more clear-cut , but it would be interesting to see if someone will make a case for the other half . - - marion kee marion kee | all opinions are my own ; knowledge engineer , center for machine translation | when cmu wants my opinions carnegie mellon university pittsburgh , pa , usa | it pays for them .
