Thing To Do Today: secrete something.

Here's another contranym - that is, one of those words which mean both themselves and their own opposites.

So, what sort of secreting shall we do? Shall we ooze moisture, like a maturing cheese? Or shall we, instead of revealing our innards in this way, hide ourselves (or something else) from view?

I suppose the most ambitious of us could run up sweatily up a mountain with a spade and use it to bury something at the top (most sensibly the spade itself, to lighten the journey home) and thus do both at simultaneously.

Anyway, secreting things is good exercise, whether it's the oozing physical sort of secreting or the mental where-on-earth-did-I-put-that? sort.

Just don't blame me when you're trying to find your car keys, that's all.

Thing To Do Today: secrete something. The oozing sort of secrete comes from the word secretion, which comes from the Mediaeval Latin sēcrētiō, a separation.The hiding sort of secrete comes from the word secret, from the Latin sēcrētus, concealed, from sēcernere, to sift. So both are to do with the idea of separation and distinguishing between things.