phantonym

English

Etymology

From phant(om) +‎ -onym, with self-aware influence from antonym; Macmillan Dictionary reports that corpus searches have found that the word seems to have been coined several times , with several meanings all related to wordplay, accidental gaps, or catachresis, as long ago as 1993 (by Irwin M. Berent, referring to comical neologisms such as bebig, analogous to embiggen) and most recently in 2009, by Jack Rosenthal, as an -onym term for words whose sound or appearance makes them liable to be used catachrestically.

Noun

phantonym (plural phantonyms)

1. A word that appears to mean one thing but actually means something else. Example: the English word noisome, which appears to be related to noise, but actually refers to something with an offensive smell (odor). Such terms are predisposed toward catachrestic use (including malapropisms) by speakers and writers.
   • 2009 September 25, Jack Rosenthal, “Phantonym. On Language column”, in New York Times Magazine, retrieved 2023-02-07:

     High-school juniors across the country, facing their first Preliminary SAT exams, are engrossed in improving their vocabulary. Here's a thought that might help: A word that means the opposite of another is an antonym; a word that looks as if it means one thing but means quite another could be called a phantonym, and warrants wariness. ¶ Phantonyms pop up in the usage of even so careful a speaker as President Obama. As William Safire noted in March, when the president said that he wanted the American people to have "a fulsome accounting" for his stimulus program, he meant full, whereas to punctilious authorities the word means disgusting, excessive, insincere. […] Likewise, noisome does not mean noisy but smelly, unhealthful. […] Enormity does not mean enormous but great wickedness, a monstrous act.

See also

• false friend (entailing a similar phenomenon interlingually, when translation is occurring)

References