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Opposite (semantics) In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is male entails that it is not female. 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 opposition.
Contronym. A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings; such a word is also known as an antagonym, autoantonym, contranym, or Janus word. [ 1][ 2] For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [ 3][ 4] enantionymy ( enantio- means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy.
Antiphrasis. 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]
The corresponding Latin antonym, ars, is the source of English art, which is not an antonym of inert. Inflammable Flammable Synonym. From Latin flammare meaning "to catch fire". Inflammable is from Latin inflammare meaning "to cause to catch fire". Antonym is nonflammable. [4] Innocent Nocent Rare. Means "harmful". Innocuous Nocuous Uncommon [5 ...
The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος phobos, "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental disorder (e.g. agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g. hydrophobic), in biology to describe organisms that dislike certain conditions (e.g ...
Synonym. A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. [ 2] For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one ...
Thesaurus. A thesaurus ( pl.: thesauri or thesauruses ), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [ 1][ 2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower ...
An aptronym, aptonym, or euonym is a personal name aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner: owner's occupation or situations (e.g., workplace). [1]Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post coined the word inaptonym as an antonym for "aptonym".