I Contain Multitudes

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman. 1855. "A Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass.

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English, in case you haven't noticed is a really weird language. Take a nice lump of Germanic, add some Scandinavian, frost with Romance, and be sure to include some nice bits of Celtic, Slavic and every other language you can think of. Then stand back and wait for compliments.

English spelling is a nightmare. Irregular verbs are caltrops (look it up). Idiomatic expressions are less transparent than Chinese characters. And there are weird historical remnants -- the past tense of go is went, because we used to use wend (and still do occasionally), and apparently everybody decided goed was horrible.

But for all its hostile weirdness, English is a joy to people who love wordplay. And one aspect of that is nyms.

You're probably familiar with some of our nyms, like "acronyms" (e.g. NATO, NASA, etc.) and "synonyms" (words with the same meaning, like "near" and "close"). But there are more nyms out there than you can possibly have dreamed. Wikipedia lists no fewer than sixty-seven different nyms (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-onym):

1. acronym
2. allonym
3. anacronym
4. andronym
5. anonym
6. anepronym
7. anthroponym
8. antonym
9. apronym
10. aptronym
11. astronym
12. autonym
13. backronym
14. basionym
15. caconym
16. capitonym
17. charactonym
18. chrematonym
19. chresonym
20. consonym
21. contronym
22. cryptonym
23. demonym
24. endonym
25. eponym
26. ergonym
27. ethnonym
28. exonym
29. geonym
30. glossonym or glottonym
31. heterochresonym
32. heteronym
33. hodonym
34. holonym
35. homonym
36. hydronym
37. hypernym
38. hypocoronym or hypocoristic
39. hyponym
40. isonym
41. meronym
42. metonym
43. matronym or matronymic
44. mononym
45. microtoponym
46. necronym
47. numeronym
48. odonym
49. oikonym 
50. oronym 
51. orthochresonym 
52. paedonymic 
53. paronym 
54. patronym 
55. phytonym 
56. plesionym 
57. pseudonym 
58. retronym 
59. synonym 
60. tautonym  
61. taxonym 
62. textonym 
63. theonym 
64. theronym 
65. toponym 
66. troponym 
67. zoonym 

Some of these are pretty familiar ("pseudonym," "antonym"). Some are technical ("phytonym" just means "plant name"). Some are distinctly weird (a "holonym" is defined as "a word for the whole of which other words are part, in the way house contains roof, door and window; or car contains steering-wheel and engine," and while I get the concept, I can't imagine an occasion when it would be the best term to communicate that concept).

But some of these are just kind of fun. Like contronyms.¹

Contronyms are words that are their own opposites. The classic example is "cleave." Cleave can mean "to divide," but it can also mean "to adhere." Why? Because it comes from two different Old English roots. Most people can think of a few other examples.

And then there are the kind of obsessives who create vast and terrifying lists of the things.

I've gone through a few sources, and these are fifteen I think are worth contemplating:

1. Bolt: "Bolt the door before he tries to bolt!"
2. Bound: "I was bound for China, but I found myself bound hand and foot."
3. Cleave: "Cleave to your wife, before cleave you that chicken with your cleaver."
4. Clip: "Clip those pages together, and then we can clip out all the pictures."
5. Dust: "Dust the kitchen, I need to dust the top of that cake with powdered sugar."
6. Fast: "Stand fast, men! The enemy is moving fast!"
7. Fine: "They said we were going to a a display of fine china, and I said I that was fine with me."
8. Left: "The gentlemen left, and the ladies were left."
9. Out: "The flashlight went out, but we could still see because the moon was out."
10. Sanction: "I cannot sanction the imposition of a sanction!"
11. Screen: "We wanted to screen a racy film, but we had to screen it from the children."
12. Seed: "I seeded the grapes, and then went out and seeded the lawn."
13. Strike: "I wanted to strike that ball, but I missed -- it was a strike."
14. Temper: "We have tempered our response; they have been tempered by adversity."
15. With: "He fought with the British during the war."

Don't love these? Don't worry, there are dozens and dozens more that you might like better (check the references). Here's hoping you found this perfectly egregious.²

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Notes

¹ "Contronyms" are also known as "contranyms," "auto-antonyms," "antagonyms," "Janus words," "enantiodromes," "self-antonyms," "antilogies," and "addads." Because otherwise things would get stale, I guess.
² Egregious usually means very bad, but it originally meant very good.

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References

http://mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-contronyms-words-with-contradictory-meanings/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym

http://www.rinkworks.com/words/contronyms.shtml

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marv-rubinstein/14-wacky-words-with-two-o_b_6213568.html