In the course of some normal conversation, it occured to me that the term "mind" can have (nearly direct) opposite meanings. As in mind/obey me, or if you mind (are unwilling) to help me out.
I looked up "autoantonyms on wikipedia for other words that can have opposite meanings to themselves. (And I made my own first wikipedia entry on "mind" which wasn't in there.)
Here are some of the words that can mean the exact (or nearly exact) opposites of themselves from the wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_auto-antonyms_in_English
(but I never found "left" and "the other left" in there.)
awful: (1) originally used as a term to mean full of awe, even better than awesome (2) now means something exceptionally bad
boned: (1) an adjective describing bones (as in "big-boned"); (2) an adjective, based on the past tense of the verb "bone", meaning that bones have been removed (as in a "boned chicken," now commonly "deboned").
cool: commonly accepted slang, cool means happy, pleasant, agreeable; but when referring to a personal interaction, especially in politics, it usually means "less than agreeable" or "polite but strained" (he received a cool reception to his speech).
custom: As a noun, this means "conventional behavior"; but as an adjective, it means "specially designed".
dust: In "to dust furniture", this verb means "to remove dust from", but in "to dust a room for fingerprints" and "the streets were dusted with snow", it means "to apply dust to".[9]
impassionate: (1) Strongly affected. (2) Without passion or feeling.
mind: Can mean to dislike or to disagree with, as in "Would you mind (dislike) helping me for a minute?"; or it can mean to give heed to or obey, as in "mind what I say".
left: As a past tense verb, it means "to have gone"; as an adjective; it means "remaining".
scan: Originally, this word meant "to examine closely," but has come to mean "to look over hastily".
terrific: Originally and still used to mean "inducing terror", but has now come to have a positive connotation as well, meaning "fantastic" or "amazing"
Work: as a verb means to do labor, as a noun in surveying work, it means has none and reads Beerleg.com all day. 😉
One that always gets me is "resign".
If I say, "The coach announced today that he's going to resign", did he quit or extend or his contract?
Another one, although not a true case, is raise and raze, which I believe are both pronouced the same. You can raise a barn or raze a barn, which sounds the same and mean the exact opposite ....
