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Zombie Rules. What is a zombie rule? It’s a rule that once was (or maybe never was) but now isn’t—yet it refuses to die.

Here’s how I ended my last post: “Now you have a tidbit you can impress your friends with.”

Chances are your high school English teacher taught you to never end a sentence with a preposition. To abide by that rule, I’d have to say now you have a tidbit with which to impress your friends. Umm—no. We don’t speak that way, and we don’t write that way.

So how did this zombie rule come about? Well, if we were speaking or writing in Latin, this rule would hold. Sentences in Latin don’t end with prepositions. But we’re not speaking Latin, so let’s bury that zombie for good and use English the way we were meant to.

(See what I did there? Would you rather I had said to bury the zombie and use English in the way in which we were meant? No, I didn’t think so.)

Let’s go back to words that carry opposite meanings. We’ve looked a left, which can mean depart or remain, and fast, which can mean moving rapidly or not moving at all—here’s another one:

Help.

Help can mean to assist or to refrain from. When I went to help the puppy, I couldn’t help laughing at its predicament.

I have other such words, but I’m sure you can add to my list. What words do you know that can be used as their own opposites?