My theme for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is contronyms. A contronym is a word with two or more opposite meanings, making it its own antonym. Click here to find out more about these quirky words.
We made it! We've reached the end of the A to Z Challenge! Unfortunately, I'll be finishing up not with a bang but a whimper because I could not find any contronyms for the letter Z on any of the lists I've collected. Zero. Zilch. Instead, I decided take the same approach I did with the letter K and pick a contronym with the letter Z in it somewhere. So I searched all my lists again, and it turns out there is only one contronym that contains the letter Z. Making it a slightly less pathetic pick, it actually has two Zs: puzzle.
Puzzle - to perplex, confuse, mystify (to pose a problem)
~ or ~
Puzzle - to solve by careful study or effort (to solve a problem)
My first year I was completely puzzled about why people would participate in something as time-consuming and draining as the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, but after meeting so many wonderful fellow bloggers, I have puzzled out why people come back year after year.
I hope you've had fun with the A to Z challenge. I had a blast learning about all the crazy contronyms out there. Thank you to all the people who stopped by for a visit! I've enjoyed getting to know all of you through your blogs, and I hope you'll stay in touch going forward.
Are you familiar with contronyms? Can you think of a ‘Z’ contronym the lists might have missed? How Zonked is Freya with her letter Z (just like I feel!)?
Added after some bloghopping: I was over at the very funny Kern’s blog where she talked about how many people post about zombies for Z because they are awesome. I did post about a zombie movie last year, but it got me thinking . . . could I have used them again this year? Is a zombie the ultimate contronym? I mean, they are the living dead. It’s probably more of an oxymoron than a contronym, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
There was only one option for the letter Y on my lists of contronyms, but now that we've reached the difficult end of the alphabet, I'm just grateful to have a contronym to talk about no matter what it is. And this one is pretty decent: yield. The meanings are not as obviously opposite as some of the contronyms I've presented, but it doesn't require as much stretching and twisting as some of the others I've seen.
As I'm sure was the case for many of my fellow A to Z participants, the letter X proved to be a bit tricky. I consulted several different lists of contronyms and there was nary a X contronym to be found. I was starting to 
The end is so close I can taste it. And it’s a good thing because as much fun as I’ve had with these contronyms, I’m plum tuckered out. Fortunately, the W section of the contronym list had a nice array of choices. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from here – the last three letters will be no fun at all. But for today, the contronym is weather.
The letter V was much more accommodating than 
After having a bunch of letters in a row with lots of contronyms to choose from, I was sad to see there were only two choices for the letter U: unbending and unqualified. Even worse, I’m not excited about either one. I think they both fall into that category where you have to do some twisting and stretching to see the definitions as opposites. But unbending is the more contronym-y of the two choices, so I’m going with that one.
Here we are at the start of week four and letter S of the A to Z challenge. Not surprisingly, the letter S has a large selection of contronyms to choose from, probably the most so far. So which contronym did I decide to feature? It's a word I use fairly often: screen.
There are a lot of R contronyms on the various lists, but I think some of them are practically cheating. Some previous words on the lists have kind of twisted and stretched the definitions in order to make them contronyms, but several of these examples barely qualify as the same word because they are just adding 're' to the front of other words. For example: release (let go) versus re-lease (hold on to) and resign (quit a contract) versus re-sign (sign a contract again). There were a few more like these, and I don't really think they count. So for my featured R contronym, I picked one that truly has opposite meanings: root.
The letter Q is often a tough one for many of the A to Z challenge themes, but luckily my list of contronyms has four options. One of the options is quiddity, which was actually 
I’m a writer and filmmaker exploring the magic of stories. I’ve always loved to read and watch television and movies; and now that I’m creating my own stories, I’m taking a closer look at what makes fiction so enchanting. I’ll also share stories from my own life, especially about my pets. They're adorable, I promise.
