ANTINOME noun (an-tuh-nohm)

noun
1. something that is contradictory or opposite to another; a logical contradiction.


Quotes

... both terms of any antinome tend to become of equal importance. Thus Good-Evil; as soon as one has admitted the existence of evil, one is led inevitably to a dualism and a balance.
--*Malcom Cowley,*"To Kenneth Burke, March 13, 1922," The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987, 2014

His notion of the real value of the precious metals was the antinome, as it were, of his view that their cost prevented the supply of money in sufficient abundance; that they were too dear, in short, and ought to be discarded for a cheaper and more prolific medium.
--*"The Scot Abroad," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, July 1856



Origin

The uncommon noun antinome (“contradiction, opposition”) is from the Greek preposition and combining form antÃ*- “opposite; in opposition to” and the noun nómos “usage, custom, law.” Nómos derives from the Greek (and Proto-Indo-European) root nem-, nom- “to assign, allot, take.” The same root is the source of Greek nomós “pasture land, pasturage.” The root appears in Germanic, as in Gothic and Old English niman “to take” (surviving in English in the adjective numb “taken or seized with cold or pain”) and the German verb nehmen “to take.” Antinome entered English in the 19th century.