Opposite (semantics)
In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an
inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the op-
posite pairs big : small, long : short, and precede : follow.
The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that
one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not the other
pair member. For example, something that is long entails
that it is not short. It is referred to as a 'binary' relation-
ship because there are two members in a set of opposites.
The relationship between opposites is known as opposi-
tion. A member of a pair of opposites can generally be
determined by the question What is the opposite of X ?
The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is
commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite,
but antonym also has other more restricted meanings.
Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose
meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous
spectrum (hot, cold). Complementary antonyms are
word pairs whose meanings are opposite but whose mean-
ings do not lie on a continuous spectrum (push, pull). Re-
lational antonyms are word pairs where opposite makes
sense only in the context of the relationship between the
two meanings (teacher, pupil). These more restricted
meanings may not apply in all scholarly contexts, with
Lyons (1968, 1977) dening antonym to mean gradable
antonyms, and Crystal (2003) warns that antonymy and
antonym should be regarded with care.
1 General discussion
Opposites are simultaneously dierent and similar in
meaning. Typically, they dier in only one dimension of
meaning, but are similar in most other respects, includ-
ing similarity in grammar and positions of semantic ab-
normality. Additionally, not all words have an opposite.
Some words are non-opposable. For example, animal or
plant species have no binary opposites (other than possi-
ble gender opposites such as lion/lioness, etc.); the word
platypus therefore has no word that stands in opposition
to it (hence the unanswerability of What is the opposite of
platypus?).
Other words are opposable but have an accidental gap in
a given languages lexicon. For example, the word devout
lacks a lexical opposite, but it is fairly easy to conceptu-
alize a parameter of devoutness where devout lies at the
positive pole with a missing member at the negative pole.
Opposites of such words can nevertheless sometimes be
formed with the prexes un- or non-, with varying de-
grees of naturalness. For example, the word undevout
1
appears in Websters dictionary of 1828, while the pat-
tern of non-person could conceivably be extended to non-
platypus. Conversely, some words appear to be a prexed
form of an opposite, but the opposite term does not exist,
such as inept, which appears to be in- + *ept; such a word
is known as an unpaired word.
Opposites may be viewed as a special type of
incompatibility.[1] Words that are incompatible cre-
ate the following type of entailment (where X is a given
word and Y is a dierent word incompatible with word
X):[2]
[3]
sentence A is X entails sentence A is not Y
An example of an incompatible pair of words is cat : dog:
Its a cat entails Its not a dog [4]
This incompatibility is also found in the opposite pairs
fast : slow and stationary : moving, as can be seen below:
Its fast entails Its not slow [5]
Its stationary entails Its not moving
Cruse (2004) identies some basic characteristics of op-
posites:
binarity
inherentness
patency
2 Antonyms
An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite mean-
ings. Each word in the pair is the antithesis of the other.
A word may have more than one antonym. There are
three categories of antonyms identied by the nature of
the relationship between the opposed meanings. Where
the two words have denitions that lie on a continu-
ous spectrum of meaning, they are gradable antonyms.
Where the meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum
and the words have no other lexical relationship, they are
complementary antonyms. Where the two meanings are
opposite only within the context of their relationship, they
are relational antonyms.
2 6 NOTES
2.1 Gradable antonyms
A gradable antonym is one of a pair of words with oppo- An auto-antonym is a word that can have opposite mean-
site meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous ings in dierent contexts or under separate denitions:
spectrum. Temperature is such a continuous spectrum so
hot and cold, two meanings on opposite ends of the spec-
trum, are gradable antonyms. Other examples include:
heavy : light, fat : skinny, dark : light, young : old, early
: late, empty : full, dull : interesting.
2.2 Complementary antonyms
A complementary antonym is one of a pair of words with
opposite meanings, where the two meanings do not lie on
a continuous spectrum. There is no continuous spectrum
between push and pull but they are opposite in meaning
and are therefore complementary antonyms. Other ex-
amples include: dead : alive, o : on, day : night, exit
: entrance, exhale : inhale, occupied : vacant, identical :
dierent.
2.3 Relational antonyms
A relational antonym is one of a pair of words with oppo-
site meanings, where opposite makes sense only in the
context of the relationship between the two meanings.
There is no lexical opposite of teacher, but teacher and
pupil are opposite within the context of their relationship.
This makes them relational antonyms. Other examples
include: husband : wife, doctor : patient, predator : prey,
teach : learn, servant : master, come : go, parent : child.
3 Opposite
Some planned languages abundantly use such devices
to reduce vocabulary multiplication. Esperanto has
mal- (compare bona = good and malbona = bad),
Damin has kuri- (tjitjuu small, kuritjitjuu large) and
Newspeak has un- (as in ungood, bad).
3.1 Directional opposites
antipodals
reversives
converses (or relational opposites)
pseudo-opposites
Relational antonyms (Converses) are pairs in
which one describes a relationship between two ob-
jects and the other describes the same relationship
when the two objects are reversed, such as parent
and child, teacher and student, or buy and sell.
4 Auto-antonyms
enjoin (to prohibit, issue injunction; to order,
command)
fast (moving quickly; xed rmly in place)
cleave (to split; to adhere)
sanction (punishment, prohibition ; permission)
stay (remain in a specic place, postpone; guide di-
rection, movement)
5 See also
-onym
Antithesis
Litotes
Relational oppositeness
Semantic dierential
Thesaurus
6 Notes
[1] Incompatibility can be compared to exclusive disjunction
in logic.
[2] There are four types of entailment useful to lexical seman-
tics:
unilateral entailment: Its a sh unilaterally entails
Its an animal. (It is unilateral, i.e. one-directional,
because Its an animal does not entail Its a sh since
it could be a dog or a cat or some other animal.)
logical equivalence (or multilateral entailment):
The party commenced at midnight entails The party
began at midnight AND The party began at midnight
also entails The party commenced at midnight.
contrariety: The sentences 'X is blue all over' and
'X is red all over' are contraries since both cannot
be simultaneously true. On the Aristotelian square
of opposition, the A and E type propositions ('All
As are Bs and 'No As are Bs, respectively) are
contraries of each other. Propositions that can-
not be simultaneously false (e.g. 'Something is red'
and 'Something is not red') are said to be subcon-
traries.
contradiction: Its dead entails Its not alive AND
Its not alive entails Its dead AND Its alive entails
Its not dead AND Its not dead entails Its alive. Its
dead and Its alive are said to be in a contradictory
relation.

[3] Stated dierently, if the proposition expressed by the sen-
tence A is X is TRUE, then the proposition expressed by
the sentence A is not Y is also TRUE.
[4] It is assumed here that it has the same referent.
[5] It is also assumed here the reference point of comparison
for these adjectives remains the same in both sentences.
For example, a rabbit might be fast compared to turtle but
slow compared to a sport car. It is essential when deter-
mining the relationships between the lexical meaning of
words to keep the situational context identical.
7 Bibliography
Crystal, David. (2003). A dictionary of linguistics
and phonetics (5th ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
Cruse, D. Alan. (1986). Lexical semantics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cruse, D. Alan. (1992). Antonymy revisited: Some
thoughts on the relationship between words and con-
cepts. In A. J. Lehrer & E. F. Kittay (Eds.), Frames,
elds, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and
lexical organization (pp. 289306). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Cruse, D. Alan. (2002). Paradigmatic relations
of exclusion and opposition II: Reversivity. In
D. A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-
R. Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexikologie: Ein internationales
Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wrtern und
Wortschtzen: Lexicology: An international hand-
book on the nature and structure of words and vocab-
ularies (Vol. 1, pp. 507510). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Cruse, D. Alan. (2004). Meaning in language: An
introduction to semantics and pragmatics (2nd ed.).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cruse, D. Alan; & Togia, Pagona. (1995). Towards
a cognitive model of antonymy. Journal of Lexicol-
ogy 1, 113-141.
Davies, M. (2007) The Attraction of Opposites:
The ideological function of conventional and cre-
ated oppositions in the construction of in-groups and
out-groups in news texts, in Jeries, L., McIntyre,
D. and Bouseld, D. (eds) Stylistics and Social Cog-
nition, pp. 79100.
Davies, M. (2013) Oppositions and Ideology in
News Discourse. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Jeries, L. (2009, forthcoming) Opposition in Dis-
course: The Construction of Oppositional Meaning
London: Continuum.
Jones, S. (2002), Antonymy: A Corpus-based per-
spective London and New York: Routledge.
3
Lehrer, Adrienne J. (1985). Markedness and
antonymy. Journal of Linguistics, 21, 397-421.
Lehrer, Adrienne J. (2002). Paradigmatic re-
lations of exclusion and opposition I: Gradable
antonymy and complementarity. In D. A. Cruse,
F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-R. Lutzeier (Eds.),
Lexikologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur
und Struktur von Wrtern und Wortschtzen: Lex-
icology: An international handbook on the nature
and structure of words and vocabularies (Vol. 1, pp.
498507). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Lehrer, Adrienne J.; & Lehrer, Keith. (1982).
Antonymy. Linguistics and Philosophy, 5, 483-501.
Lyons, John. (1963). Structural semantics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, John. (1968). Introduction to theoretical lin-
guistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, John. (1977). Semantics (Vol. 1). Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mettinger, Arthur. (1994). Aspects of semantic op-
position in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Murphy, M. Lynne. (2003). Semantic relations
and the lexicon: Antonymy, synonymy, and other
paradigms. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics: A new outline.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saeed, John I. (2003). Semantics (2nd ed.). Malden,
MA: Blackwell
8 External links
Bibliography of Antonymy: English Sources
Thesaurus.com - also provides antonyms
Power Thesaurus - multiple lexical semantics, in-
cluding antonymous.
FindMeWords Antonyms - Online Antonyms Dic-
tionary with denitions
4 9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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