Promoters and other contronyms, Canadian Lawyer

Neill May is a contributor to Canadian Lawyer magazine.  This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue.

Excerpt from "Promoters and other contronyms":

In grade school, many of my pals called me “NIM” because of my initials.  So, naturally, when we first started to learn about contronyms (words with opposite meanings), it sounded to me like a group of people opposed to me. That wouldn’t have bothered me as a kid. These days, I would react more like the great line from Catch-22, to the effect that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get you. It doesn’t help that my nickname has morphed to “Nil,” given to me by my daughter as a rough estimation of my value. In any event, I got to thinking about contronyms again in light of the recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Goldsmith v. National Bank of Canada.