Here’s Bill Bryson on the word set. “Superficially it looks like a wholly unassuming monosyllable, the verbal equivalent of the single-celled organism. Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb and 10 as a participle adjective. Its meanings are so varied and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words – the length of a short novel – to discuss them all. A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English.”

So set is a polyseme. – a word with many meanings. Now here’s a contronym: the word cleave. This can be to cut in half or stick together. Sanction means permission or forbiddance. If you wind up a watch, you start it, but if you wind up a meeting, you end it. This can be confusing.     read more >>