6 verbi italiani con significato opposto

Which Italian verbs mean their own opposite?

Enantiosemia is when one word carries two opposite meanings and only context tells you which. Italian has a striking set of such verbs. Tirare is both to pull something toward you and to hurl it away; sbarrare both bars a door shut and, in sbarrare gli occhi, opens the eyes wide; cacciare both hunts something down and drives it away; affittare covers both renting a place out and renting one. Same verb, opposite directions — context resolves it.

A few confirmed by the Treccani dictionary: tirare la palla (throw the ball away) versus the “tirare” on a shop door you pull toward you. Sbarrare la porta (bar it shut) sits beside Dante’s “l’occhio intento sbarro” (I open my eye wide). Cacciare la selvaggina is to pursue game, while caccia via quell’animale! is to shoo it off; affittare officially means to let out, though everyday speech also uses it for taking on rent. Italian-teacher Lucrezia lines these up on a whiteboard to make the point that, in Italian, context is everything.