Contronym

Verbs

• The Romanian verb a închiria, the French verb louer, the Afrikaans verb huur, the Finnish verb vuokrata and the Spanish alquilar and arrendar mean "to rent" (as the lessee does) as well as "to let" (as the lessor does). The English verb rent can also describe either the lessee's or the lessor's role.
• In Spanish dar (basic meaning "to give"), when applied to lessons or subjects, can mean "to teach", "to take classes" or "to recite", depending on the context. Similarly with the French verb apprendre, which usually means "to learn" but may refer to the action of teaching someone. Dutch leren and Afrikaans leer can mean "to teach" or "to learn".
• In Hebrew the root נכר can mean "to recognize" or "to be a stranger [to not be recognized]" (Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. New York: Pardes, 1950, vol. II,911-912). The root appears 4 times in Genesis 42:7-8 (Jonathan Sacks, The Koren Shalem Humash with Rashi and Onkelos. Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2025, 305).
• In Greek some verbs that begin with the prefix "από-" (apo-) can have a contranym meaning. A prominent example is the verb "αποφράζω" means "to plug something, to fill a hole", and is usually used as a medical term, based on the original ancient Greek meaning. The more modern Greek meaning is "to unplug something, remove a blockage". Similar verbs are "απογεμίζω", that can both mean "to fill up to a brim" and "to empty completely" and "απομαθαίνω", that can both mean "to learn something very well" and "to forget something I learned". The meaning that negates the main action, is usually a more modern Greek one. The prefix "apo-" sometimes enhances an action and sometimes negates it.
• There are two Latin verbs deformo, one meaning "to bring into shape", the other meaning "to bring out of shape".
• Arabic: صَوَّبَ, romanized: ṣawwaba can mean "to deem [something] wrong and set it right; to correct" and "to deem something correct".

Adverbs

• Icelandic: fram eftir can mean "toward the sea" or "away from the sea" depending on dialect.
• Irish: ar ball can mean "a while ago" or "in a little bit/later on"

Adjectives

• The Latin sinister lit. 'left' meant both "auspicious" and "inauspicious", within the respective Roman and Greek traditions of augury. The negative meaning was carried on into French and ultimately English.
• Latin nimius means "excessive, too much". It maintained this meaning in Spanish nimio, but it was also misinterpreted as "insignificant, without importance".
• In Korean, 연패 (yeonpae) means either "consecutive losses" (the Sino-Korean word 連敗) or "consecutive wins" (orthographic borrowing of Japanese 連覇).
• In Vietnamese, minh means among other things "bright, clear" (from Sino-Vietnamese 明) and "dead, gloomy" (from 冥). Because of this, the name of the dwarf planet Pluto is not adapted from 冥王星 as in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
• In Japanese, 適当 (tekitou) can mean both "suitable, proper" and "sloppy, careless".
• Spanish dichoso meant originally "blissful, fortunate" as in tierra dichosa, "fortunate land". However it developed an ironic and colloquial meaning "bothersome, unlucky", as in ¡Dichosas moscas!, "Damned flies!".

Nouns

• Arabic mawlā means both master and slave.

In translation

Seeming contronyms can arise from translation. In Hawaiian, for example, aloha is translated both as "hello" and as "goodbye", but the essential meaning of the word is "love", whether used as a greeting or farewell. Similarly, 안녕 (annyeong) in Korean and שלום (shalom) in Hebrew can mean both "hello" and "goodbye" but the central meaning is "peace". The Italian greeting ciao is translated as "hello" or "goodbye" depending on the context; the original meaning was "at your service" (literally "(I'm your) slave"). In Hungarian, "szervusz" serves a similar double role.