Nuts and Bolts: antilogy.

The Word Den was thinking about the word antilog the other day, and next to it in the dictionary I happened upon the word antilogy. 

(And after antilogy comes antimacassar, which just goes to show how random even a language which is largely made up of bits of other words stuck together can be.)

The usually reliable Wikipedia speaks of an antilogy being an alternative term for a contranym (a word which means both itself and its own opposite (like the word dust, which can mean to put dust onto something, or to take it off)) but an antilogy is more often a contradiction in terms - that is, a phrase which contradicts itself, like independent colony, visible darkness, or delicious root beer.

(Yes, they are also called oxymorons, but it's usually kinder to call them antilogies, people being extremely sensitive to being associated in any way with the word moron.)

There. Antilogy.

So now we're all educated ignoramuses, aren't we?

Word To Use Today: antilogy. The Greek form of this word was antilogia. The English language pinched it in the 1600s.