Opposite (semantics) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)

Opposite (semantics)
In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship.
For example, something that is entails that it is not . It is referred to as a 'binary'
relationship because there are two members in a set of opposites. The relationship between
opposites is known as . A member of a pair of opposites can generally be determined
by the question

The term (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 meanings do
not lie on a continuous spectrum ( , ). Relational antonyms are word pairs where opposite
makes sense only in the context of the relationship between the two meanings ( , ).
These more restricted meanings may not apply in all scholarly contexts, with Lyons (1968, 1977)
defining antonym to mean gradable antonyms, and Crystal (2003) warning that antonymy and
antonym should be regarded with care.

General discussion

Opposition is a semantic relation in which one word has a sense or meaning that negates or is, in
the sense of scale, distant from a related word. Other words are capable of being opposed, but
the language in question has an accidental gap in its lexicon. For example, the word lacks
a lexical opposite, but it is fairly easy to conceptualize a parameter of devoutness where
lies at the positive pole with a missing member at the negative pole. Opposites of such words
can nevertheless sometimes be formed with the prefixes or , with varying degrees of
naturalness. For example, the word appears in Webster's dictionary of 1828, while the
pattern of could conceivably be extended to . Conversely, some words
appear to be a prefixed form of an opposite, but the opposite term does not exist, such as
which appears to be +* such a word is known as an unpaired word.

Opposites may be viewed as a special type of incompatibility.[1] Words that are incompatible
create the following type of entailment (where is a given word and is a different word
incompatible with word X):[2]

sentence entails sentence [3]

An example of an incompatible pair of words is :

entails [4]

1 of 6 20/02/2024, 16:28
Opposite (semantics) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)

This incompatibility is also found in the opposite pairs and , as can

be seen below:

entails [5]

entails

Cruse (2004) identifies some basic characteristics of opposites:

• , the occurrence of opposites as a lexical pair

• , whether the relationship may be presumed implicitly

• , the quality of how obvious a pair is

Some planned languages abundantly use such devices to reduce vocabulary multiplication.
Esperanto has (compare = "good" and = "bad"), Damin has ( "small",
"large") and Newspeak has (as in , "bad").

Some classes of opposites include:

• , pairs of words which describe opposite ends of some axis, either literal (such as
"left" and "right", "up" and "down", "east" and "west") or figurative or abstract (such as "first" and
"last", "beginning" and "end", "entry" and "exit")

• (or "incompatibles"), members of a set which are mutually exclusive but

which leave a unfilled, such as "red" and "blue", "one" and "ten", or "Monday" and
"Friday".

• , pairs of verbs which denote opposing processes, in which one is the reverse of the
other. They are (or may be) performed by the same or similar subject(s) without requiring an
object of the verbs, such as "rise" and "fall", "accelerate" and "decelerate", or "shrink" and
"grow".

• (or or ), pairs in which one describes a

relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two
objects are reversed, such as and , and , or and .

• , a pair of comparatives in which one, but not the other, implies the
positive:
◦ An example is "better" and "worse". The sentence " is better than " does not imply that
is good, but " is worse than " implies that is bad. Other examples are "faster" and
"slower" ("fast" is implied but not "slow") and "dirtier" and "cleaner" ("dirty" is implied but

2 of 6 20/02/2024, 16:28
Opposite (semantics) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)

not "clean"). The relationship between overlapping antonyms is often not inherent, but
arises from the way they are interpreted most generally in a language. There is no inherent
reason that an item be presumed to be bad when it is compared to another as being
worse (it could be "less good"), but English speakers have combined the meaning
semantically to it over the development of the language.

Types of antonyms

An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings. 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 identified by the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings.

A gradable antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings
lie on a continuous spectrum. Temperature is such a continuous spectrum so and , two
meanings on opposite ends of the spectrum, are gradable antonyms. Other examples include:
: , : , : , : , : , : , : .

A complementary antonym, sometimes called a binary or contradictory antonym (Aarts, Chalker

& Weiner 2014), 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 and but
they are opposite in meaning and are therefore complementary antonyms. Other examples
include: : , : , : , : .

A relational antonym is one of a pair of words that refer to a relationship from opposite points of
view. There is no lexical opposite of , but and are opposite within the context
of their relationship. This makes them relational antonyms. Other examples include: :
, : , : , : , : , : , : .

Auto-antonyms

An auto-antonym is a word that can have opposite meanings in different contexts or under

3 of 6 20/02/2024, 16:28
Opposite (semantics) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)

separate definitions:

• enjoin (to prohibit, issue injunction; to order, command)

• fast (moving quickly; fixed firmly in place)

• cleave (to split; to adhere)

• sanction (punishment, prohibition; permission)

• stay (remain in a specific place, postpone; guide direction, movement)

See also

• -onym

• Antithesis

• Litotes

• Property (philosophy)

• Semantic differential

• Thesaurus

Notes

1. Incompatibility can be compared to exclusive disjunction in logic.

2. There are four types of entailment useful to lexical semantics:

• : unilaterally entails . (It is unilateral, i.e. one-directional,
because does not entail since could be a dog or a cat or some other
animal.)

• (or multilateral entailment): entails

AND also entails 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 cannot be simultaneously false (e.g. 'Something is red' and 'Something is not
red') are said to be .

• : entails AND entails AND entails

AND entails . and are said to be in a
contradictory relation.

4 of 6 20/02/2024, 16:28
Opposite (semantics) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)

3. Stated differently, if the proposition expressed by the sentence is TRUE, then the proposition
expressed by the sentence is also TRUE.

4. It is assumed here that 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 determining the relationships between the lexical meaning of words to keep
the situational context identical.

Bibliography

• Aarts, Bas; Chalker, Sylvia; Weiner, Edmund (2014),

(https://books.google.com/books?id=1awJAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA80) , Oxford University Press,
p. 80, ISBN 978-0-19-965823-7

• Crystal, David. (2003). (5th ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell

Publishing.

• Cruse, D. Alan. (1986). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Cruse, D. Alan. (1992). Antonymy revisited: Some thoughts on the relationship between
words and concepts (https://books.google.com/books?id=aU2roZJBICEC&dq=%22Antonym
y+revisited%3A+Some+thoughts+on+the+relationship+between+words+and+concepts%22&
pg=PA289) . In A. J. Lehrer & E. F. Kittay (Eds.),
(pp. 289–306). 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.),

(Vol. 1, pp. 507–510). Berlin:

De Gruyter.

• Cruse, D. Alan. (2004). (2nd

ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Cruse, D. Alan; & Togia, Pagona. (1995). Towards a cognitive model of antonymy.
, 113-141.

• Davies, M. (2007) ‘The Attraction of Opposites: The ideological function of conventional and
created oppositions in the construction of in-groups and out-groups in news texts’, in Jeffries,
L., McIntyre, D. and Bousfield, D. (eds) , pp. 79–100.

5 of 6 20/02/2024, 16:28
Opposite (semantics) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)

• Davies, M. (2013) Oppositions and Ideology in News Discourse. London: Bloomsbury

Academic.

• Jeffries, L. (2009, forthcoming)

London: Continuum.

• Jones, S. (2002), London and New York: Routledge.

• Lehrer, Adrienne J. (1985). Markedness and antonymy. , , 397-421.

• Lehrer, Adrienne J. (2002). Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition I: Gradable

antonymy and complementarity. In D. A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-R. Lutzeier
(Eds.),

(Vol. 1, pp. 498–507). Berlin: De Gruyter.

• Lehrer, Adrienne J.; & Lehrer, Keith. (1982). Antonymy. , , 483-501.

• Lyons, John. (1963). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Lyons, John. (1968). . Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

• Lyons, John. (1977). (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Mettinger, Arthur. (1994). . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

• Murphy, M. Lynne. (2003).

. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Palmer, F. R. (1976). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Saeed, John I. (2003). (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell

6 of 6 20/02/2024, 16:28