Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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).
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word original can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
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. Gradable antonyms. A gradable antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum.
Antiphrasis is the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is obvious what the true intention is. [1] Some authors treat and use antiphrasis just as irony, euphemism or litotes. [2] When the antiphrasal use is very common, the word can become an auto-antonym, [3] having opposite meanings ...
A binary opposition (also binary system) is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.Binary opposition is the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. [1]
A similar slight modification to the definition of "autological" (such as declaring it false of "nonautological" and its synonyms) might seem to correct that, but the paradox still remains for synonyms of "autological" and "heterological" such as "self-descriptive" and "non-self-descriptive", whose meanings also would need adjusting, and the ...
An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. [1] Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym, with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite.
Anaximander posited that every element had an opposite, or was connected to an opposite (water is cold, fire is hot). Thus, the material world was said to be composed of an infinite, boundless apeiron from which arose the elements (earth, air, fire, water) and pairs of opposites (hot/cold, wet/dry).