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I met a person recently who challenged my use of the word 'pious' for I thought it meant a devout and 'as unpretending as’ humanly possible toward religion, yet the other person thought I was speaking of a 'pious' person who was a charlatan or a lazily devout person.

I read Merriam Webster, thinking if both definitions have popularity, there will be evidence we are both correct, of course my choice would win, being the first ranked. Yes and no. Mine is first; it's 1a, and hers is second labeled 1b!

What?

Have I found a word that is an antonym of itself? How often does that happen? How does that happen? And what does it all mean?

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    1b) is merely an "extension" of the basic meaning of pious. And in case you're wondering if a word can mean opposite things at once, you're in for a big surprise: do google Auto-antonyms. (By the way, pious is not an Auto-antonym aka Contronym.)
    – user405662
    Commented Jun 5, 2021 at 19:27
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    There's an awful lot of words that behave the same way.
    – Rayan Khan
    Commented Jun 5, 2021 at 19:33
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    Just because “Brutus is an honorable man” does not mean that honorable is bad, except that the speaker is playing a trick. Bragging about my humility does not make being humble false, only that bragging gives away that I am the opposite.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 1:32
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    It's used a lot in irony.
    – fev
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 12:46
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    That would have been an egregious example of a word whose meaning has shifted in the past. Children and colours were once gay. Nowadays we'd say cheerful; things that left us breathless in admiration were considered awful. Ha! English.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 13:15

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One reason it can happen is topical shift, and especially the processes of amelioration (more positive meaning) and perjoration (less positive meaning). The meaning of a word can drift over time to the extent it becomes an antonym of itself. If you have access to the Oxford English Dictionary online (likely available at your friendly local university), look up a word with a long history, like the adverb/adjective "nice": over the years "nice" has meandered from "foolish, ignorant" (ca. 1300) to "wanton, lascivious" and ameliorated into "extravagant, ostentatious" (mid 15th. c), to "finely dressed" and went sideways and down a bit to "scrupulous, punctilious, difficult to please" (18th-19th c.) before easing back to "refined, cultured" and even "tasty, pleasant." And even now it has a sarcastic/dampened/ironic meaning. Nice ain't great, but it doesn't mean dumb either.

Another spot where this kind of shift comes to mind is the role generational dynamics play in slang — especially words meaning "cool." Teenagers think their parents' lingo is lame, and so words such as swell, dandy, gnarly, rad, and lit all shift in meaning, even within a generation. One couldn't assume that today's whippersnappers think that someone dressed up all dandy would be totally lit.

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