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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:	The Joy of Lex
Notice:	A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:	THEBAY::SYSTEM

Created:	Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:	Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1192
Total number of notes:	42769

1160.0. "Juxtoppositions" by 16.124.224.10::LEE () Thu Nov 16 1995 15:04

Here is a place to record and discuss the phenomenon of being able to place two
words of opposite meaning next to each other so that the result is not only
viable English, but would even be hard to notice unless you were looking for it.

I hereby coin the term juxtopposition to describe such a beast, unless it has
already been coined or unless a term unknown to myself already exists, in which
case I retract the claim of coinage, it not being worth a plug nickel.

For example:

I'm stuck out in the rain.
          ^^^ ^^

He left right after you did.
   ^^^^ ^^^^^

The first is a semantic juxtopposition in that the words in the sense in which
they are being used do have the opposite denotation. The second is a lexical
juxtopposition in that neither is used in the sense in which the two would be
opposite. There may be mixed semantic/lexical juxtoppositions which should be
called heterojuxtoppositions.

Then again, there certainly are some marriages that should be called
heterojuxtoppositions!

Wook

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
1160.1	weak, I know ;-)	TOHOPE::VORE_S	Raise The Standard	`Thu Nov 16 1995 17:18`	2
	After falling asleep in front of the T.V., Wook found himself waking up down-stairs, and went up to lie down.
1160.2		CSC32::D_DERAMO	Dan D'Eramo, Customer Support Center	`Thu Nov 16 1995 17:30`	4
	I don't do juxtoppositions. :-) I can't can vegetables. Dan
1160.3		JRDV04::DIAMOND	segmentation fault (california dumped)	`Thu Nov 16 1995 18:43`	10
	Do you get off on juxtoppositions? Buses operated by the Government of Ontario are called GO buses (or at least they were; don't know if they still are). And how are the places designated where they pick up and drop off passengers? Once I even saw a sign saying nothing other than GO STOP. One day Steve Jobs saw a machine pass quality control and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The previous NeXT's first second was its last.
1160.4		TP011::KENAH	Do we have any peanut butter?	`Fri Nov 17 1995 06:49`	5
	This word Juxtopposition is pretty ugly -- but is it an oxymoron? I brought the eider down up to the left, right? His slow fast left him very, very hungry.
1160.5		GLRMAI::WELLINGTON	Larry Wellington NSM Tech Support	`Fri Nov 17 1995 07:47`	2
	Several residents rose to express local opposition to the proposed ordinance.
1160.6	Beauty and the Beast	wook.mso.dec.com::LEE		`Fri Nov 17 1995 10:30`	2
	As the Beast drew his final breath as the last petal of the magic rose fell to the ground.
1160.7	note/nonote	NETCAD::ROLKE	The Moodus Noises	`Fri Nov 17 1995 13:29`	0
1160.8	$show proc/contin/nooutput	TOHOPE::VORE_S	Raise The Standard	`Mon Nov 20 1995 06:36`	1
	luckily VMS is smarter than to obey in this case ;-)