Tricky Edits Column for October 2025

Tricky Edits

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Editing the Uneditable 

Battling False Antonyms

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, 
author of  the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

Including the winningest book in the series, The Frugal Editor

What? Noone ever told you how to edit for false antonyms? Worse, nobody ever told you there was such a thing?

That’s why one of the reasons Dawn Colclasure lets me share my “Tricky Edits” with you in her SPARREW newsletter each month!

antonym (ANT-oh-nim) and false antonyms: I have confidence that most my precious readers are familiar with antonyms, but these guys hide a lot of tricks up their sleeves and between their syllables. Ahem! So, here’s a warning about false antonyms. 

Latin prefixes in, de, un and many others can lead us to interpret a word differently from its meaning. In, the more commonly used charlatan, turns flammable into a false antonym in a flash. So, let me start at the beginning.

John Locke first used the term antonym in the 17th Century to suggest the conflict between “good” and “bad.” Both its syllables are derived from the Greek (anti means against and onoma means name). English, then as now, has a history of borrowing from every culture it comes in contact with, but the English-speaking literary world was more familiar with Latin, so as English changed, influentials willy-nilly paired Latin prefixes like un and in with no apparent consideration given to the derivation of the root word.

Thus, Latin prefixes became so commonly used we didn’t recognize them as Latin at all.

Words like thaw became unthaw, which logically means not to thaw. Regardless of the incongruity, it stuck. Unthaw should mean the opposite of thaw which would be “to freeze” but, thankfully, logic takes hold and we still thaw our frozen dinner instead.

The Latin word in, meaning “no” or “not,” was especially fashionable and it often works the way it’s supposed to in words like inescapable but it became so problematic when hooked up with inflammable that style books recommend avoiding it, presumably based on the volatile danger it might suggest. It seems the oil industry isn’t paying attention decades later because it still uses inflammable emblazoned on its tanker trucks carrying highly explosive gasoline from its source to a neighborhood near you.

Thus, false antonyms were born. They aren’t the antonyms they were meant to be. And our brains have mostly used dyslexic moments to accept whatever they profess to be, whatever the person who uses them wants them to be. Our job is not to memorize every one—it’s to be “prefix aware” as we edit our own work—especially in a final edit—and to use a reliable thesaurus when your writing brain has even an inkling that something might be askew. Keep in mind that irregardless fooled a lot of us for a very long time, not because we don’t “get it” but because we had no idea of the extent or survival power false antonyms have insinuated into our language—nor how even great editors might not save you from this embarrassment.

MORE ABOUT CAROLYN

Once a month Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares something writer-related she hopes might save some author from embarrassment (or make the task of writing more fun or creative). The third edition of The Frugal Editor from Modern History Press includes a chapter on some of the words most misused by the very people whose business it is to know them. It is the second multi award-winning book in her multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. The Frugal Editor has been fully updated including a chapter on how backmatter can be extended to help readers and nudge book sales.

This article is an excerpt from a new vocabulary book written especially for career-minded authors that WinningWriters.com will give to those who enter their 2024 #NorthStreetBookPrize. Carolyn has been a sponsor since that contest’s introduction. This book is among the several value-added benefits Winning Writers contestants and winners are offered at no extra charge. Carolyn’s book will be released in early 2026 by Modern History Press. Find the entire series on a special Series Page offered by Amazon.

Carolyn blogs sporadically on editing at The Frugal Editor and at her SharingwithWriters blog on other aspects of the publishing world and welcomes guest posts with ample author credit lines and links and welcomes guest posts complete with credit lines and ample links for her guests. She also tweets writers' resources and tips at her Twitter account using #FrugalBookPromoterTips hashtag.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program where has found a little humor can decidedly make a lot of learning easier on one’s disposition. 

The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes both the third editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and my The Frugal Editor. Published by Modern History Press, they have won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically is still in its first (very frugal!) edition but please wait for the second edition from Modern History Press. 

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.