LEND ME YOUR EAR: `FINAL' NOT NECESSARILY ABSOLUTE

Strange as it may seem, readers keep doubting I have any intention of dropping these columns. Last week, a caller who didn't identify herself pointed out that with all the advances in technology, "harping" about mistakes in English has become passe.

What did she mean by "harping"? A harp is a musical instrument, and a "harper" can denote a musician who plays classical Beethoven, or one who plays loud literary trash miscalled music. Words having opposite meanings have always fascinated everyone who communicates in any language, and books continue to be written on every phase of usage including words having opposite meanings.

Anyone out there know a word that cannot be interpreted as pro or con? What about the commonly known term "book"? As a noun, a book can be anything from a one-page summons for an overdue book to the entire Library of Congress.

As a verb, it means to set aside for, to reserve in advance, or to make appointments. Doctors book patients, travel agents book tours, bookies sell bets, and American courts book the innocent as well as the guilty. Lovers book marriage contracts before taking the final plunge. G.B. Shaw and G.K. Chesterton joked that being married and being hanged were synonymous, though both humorists were exemplary husbands and fathers.

But we digress, as do words with opposite meanings. Last week Pastor Dissen telephoned me for a friendly chat (perhaps as a respite from requests for help), and I too had just had an experience that I could have done without. A phony phone call.

"But this is a phony call," our pastor teased. "I'm calling you by phone."

It had never occurred to me that "phony" might have an opposite, but as soon as Pastor Dissen hung up I reached for the dictionary kept closest to the phone: my trusty American Heritage. To my surprise, I learned that "phony" does indeed qualify if only in informal usage. Never mind that without technology, we would have no phones.

The opposite designation also brought to mind James Kilpatrick's delightful book "The Ear is Human," a helpful and humorous excursion through the "phones" and "nyms" familiar to most literates: homophones, homonyms, antonyms, even contranyms and heteronyms.

Longtime readers may have learned from my review of the book that a contranym is a term for a word with an opposite meaning within itself. A good example is "cleave," meaning "cling." Lovers cleave and cling, a butcher struggling with a humongous piece of meat cleaves it into meal-sized portions for roasts.

Heteronyms are words that are spelled alike but have different meanings and pronunciations. For example, an idea that was of no moMENT to me an hour earlier changed in a MOment while I was writing these words. How do I know what I think till I see what I say!

Richard Lederer, in his best-known book "Crazy English," includes "oxymoron" in a chapter on opposites, with a drawing of an oddball shouting "Good grief! What's an oxymoron?"

Most of us think of "grief" as negative, but on second thought we realize it can be excellent therapy for the grief-stricken as well. Also among Lederer's list of opposite expressions familiar to literate readers are "original copy," "voice mail," "recorded live," "random order," "light heavyweight," "student teacher," "conspicuously absent," "inside out," "mobile home," and "bridegroom."

Alert readers, give your brain cells a little exercise and add to the above. You may find this pursuit as infectious as our readers found James Kilpatrick's heteronyms game years ago.

A five-year-old little shaver who is also a quick thinker has supplied our final example of words with opposite meanings for today. William Curran Hennessey, whom readers have met before, is hardly old enough to shave, but dictionaries permit youngsters of five to be called "shavers," which permits us to add this instance to our collection. A happy accident, at least to his grandparents, Judge Bill and Birdie Rader, and no doubt to Curran himself.

Five-year-olds, as everyone knows, are usually bursting with energy long after their moms have given their all. One recent evening when Mama Beth had had an especially rough day, her little rascal kept pressuring her to read another story even though she had told him more than once that she was too tired. Finally, she found the strength to repeat, "I am not going to read you another story tonight -- and that's final!"

"Final?" queried the curious five-year-old intellectual. "What's final?"

Of course it was up to Beth to explain what final meant. "Final," she enlarged, meant the absolute end, and tonight it translated to a resounding NO!

When Beth saw that Curran was still making no move toward the stairs, she ordered him to go up and take a bath. Retorted the joy and bane of her existence, "I am not going to take a bath tonight, and that's final!"

"Final," gentle readers, is not absolutely absolute, and Aileen Lorberg is still a language "harper" for the Southeast Missourian.