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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]
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 ...
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 ...
Unpaired word. 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. If the prefix or suffix is negative, such as 'dis-' or -'less ...
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 ...
Converse (semantics) In linguistics, converses or relational antonyms are pairs of words that refer to a relationship from opposite points of view, such as parent/child or borrow/lend. [1] [2] The relationship between such words is called a converse relation. [2] Converses can be understood as a pair of words where one word implies a ...