Word trivia of the day

While pondering the question of what’s the difference (if any) between a “skill” and a “competency”, I realized that while “skilled” and “competent” are roughly synonymous, their opposites, “unskilled” and “incompetent” have quite distinct meanings. “Unskilled” means you don’t know how to do something, “incompetent” means you think you know how to do something when your really don’t know how to do it, and as a result do it very badly.

I wonder if there are any other examples of non-synonymous antonyms of synonyms?

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #121]

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