Autoantonyms are words or phrases that can also mean their opposites.
Hmmm. Is that a qualified definition?
Does it need more oversight?
Does it adumbrate the situation?
To try to decide if it holds up, we may need to hold up this discussion
and puzzle a bit to clarify.
What about the word "aspersions"? Long ago (I guess, although I wasn't there)
aspergere, in Latin, meant to sprinkle something. The expression "casting aspersions" came from a custom of ritually sprinkling water on someone, to cleanse or purify them. . . presumably meant as a helpful thing to do. And a person who did the sprinkling of the clarifying water was, in those days, called an "asperger"... which is probably where Hans Asperger (who described the eccentric brainy children he saw as patients as "little professors") got his family name.
Currently, the expression "casting aspersions" is used to mean attacking someone or being critical of them. And a lot of such aspersions seem to be cast at Aspergians, who often find it hard to act fake and superficial, as expected by others, to fit in.
All this to say that language and even thinking have an increasing tendency to decline these days.
And (sadly) there lies the truth.
But I don't sanction it.
Opera Singing Redwood
An Opera-Singing Redwood