I Offer This Post for Your Perusal

Well, our week with the kiddies is done, and so I begin to return to the blogosphere.

Actually, I didn't leave — not entirely anyway — for I did peruse many posts (mostly from Feedly) although I did not stop to comment on any but a scare few.

Or did I really 'peruse'?

It depends on what you mean by the word.

What I have always understood peruse to mean and what I have always meant in my use of it is something like: scanning something in a rather loose way to get the general sense of a document — a light overview as it were.

I honestly never knew that an opposite meaning existed until stumbling upon a podcast, A Way With Words, last week. I discovered that peruse may also mean: to examine or consider with attention and in detail.

Did you catch that?

Peruse can be an antonym of itself. In other words, it's an auto-antonym or a Janus word. I prefer the second appellation because I am too dumb to remember the former.

Up until now, the only Janus word I could remember has been, the verb, cleave: "to join" (as in "cleave unto") and "to separate or divide." I only remember this particular Janus word because I am male and well ... um ... blush.

Anyway, back to peruse: the hosts of the podcast did say that at some point, one of the two definitions will probably become dominant, but they couldn't say which one. In fact, the hosts seemed to be more familiar with the "examine intensely" definition.

Here are a few others, and you can easily find more if this interests you. I am not necessarily familiar with both definitions in the following list, but you may be.

sanction means "to allow" and "to prohibit (or punish)"
inoculate means "to protect against" and "to infect with"
cull means "to select" and "to reject"fix means "a solution" and "a problem" (also fixed)
cool means "supportive of" and "opposed to" (he was "cool with" the idea; he was "cool to" the idea); sort of a slang usage
public means both "public (free)" (in American English) and "private (fee-based)" (in British English)
screen means "to display" (~ a movie) and "to hide" (~ his view)
trim means "to remove from" (~ the tree) and "to add to" (~ the Christmas tree)
enjoin means "to direct" and "to forbid"
dust means "to remove from" (~ the table) and "to add to" (~ the cake)