It's Fun to Know: Janus Words

By Suzanne Richardson

It's an understatement to say that the English language is complicated. And in an e-mail to ETR's usage expert, Don Hauptman, Charlie Byrne raised one of our language's most prickly problems: words with contradictory meanings.

"Saturday evening, I was grilling my wife's favorite dish, cedar plank salmon, when I decided it would look nice with a fresh parsley garnish," Charlie wrote to Don. "And that's when I realized what an odd word 'garnish' is. When you garnish a prepared dish, you are ADDING something to it. But when the IRS or the court garnishes your wages, they are TAKING SOMETHING AWAY.

"Strange, eh?"

Don's response to Charlie put a name to this phenomenon. "There is an entire category of these seemingly contradictory words," he said. "They're called 'Janus words' or 'contronyms.'"

Some other examples of Janus words:

• cleave (to stick together - or to cut apart)

• sanction (to endorse - or a punitive action)

• temper (to soften or mollify - or to strengthen, as with a metal)

• handicap (an advantage, as in golf - or a disadvantage)

• lease (to borrow or hire - or to lend or rent out)

How to Save Your Muscle & Your Metabolism

By Craig Ballantyne

It's a scary statistic. You could lose several pounds of muscle per decade after age 30... and more if you diet. As a result of that muscle loss, your metabolism slows down, your risk of falls and injury increases - and do I even have to mention the dramatic decline in the appearance of your beach body?

All of that can be avoided.

According to a study in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, adding strength training to a low-calorie diet plan can help reduce muscle loss as you age.

The subjects in this 6-month study included 30 obese men and women with an average age of 70. They were divided into two groups. One group followed a low-calorie diet. The other group followed the same diet, but also performed progressively difficult resistance-training exercises.

The results were shocking. Both groups lost over 14.9 pounds of fat. However, the exercise group lost only 4 pounds of fat-free mass (which includes muscle), while the diet group lost 7.7 pounds of fat-free mass. And although the exercise group did lose some muscle, they still increased their strength by 17-43 percent, an essential defense against potentially deadly falls.

Word to the Wise: Surly

"Surly" - from the Middle English for "lordly" - means ill-humored; sullen and gruff.

Example (as used by John L'Heureux in Having Everything): "Maggie drank a little too much and got surly and made snide comments during the final toast."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2453, 09-05-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.