Antonymy Definition of Antonyms / Derivation of Antonyms / Gradable Antonyms / Complementary Antonyms / Other types of Antonyms /Auto-Antonyms

Antonyms, from the Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name") are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as young and old, and up and down. Polysemantic words may have different antonyms, depending on which meaning is actualised in the context. Both long and tall are antonyms of short.

Antonymy is a language universal, which means that pairs of words with opposite meanings exist in absolutely all human languages. Significant distinctions between phenomena in the real world are reflected in language as opposites. Antonyms represent the opposites within one and the same entity. Such relationships are a fundamental part of a language, in contrast to synonyms, which are a result of history and drawing of fine distinctions, or homonyms, which are mostly etymological accidents or coincidences. "Of all the relations of sense that semanticists propose, that of oppositeness is probably the more readily apprehended by ordinary speakers" (Cruse, 1986, p.197).

Most languages have morphological processes which can create antonyms. As Lyons writes: “In many languages, including English, the most commonly used opposites tend to be morphologically unrelated (good/bad, high/low, beautiful/ugly, big/small, old/young). But these are outnumbered in the vocabulary by such morphologically related pairs as married/unmarried, friendly/unfriendly, formal/informal, legitimate/illegitimate, etc.” (Lyons, 1977, p. 275).

In addition to un- and in-, English also has the prefixes dis- (like/dislike, honest/dishonest) and de- (colonize/decolonize, emphasize/deemphasize), as well as the suffixes -less and -ful, which together sometimes form pairs of antonyms (harmless/harmful). Of course, these affixes do not always create antonyms; it is easy to find examples which, due to semantic drift or some other cause, look morphologically as if they should be opposites but which actually are not, e.g., integrate/disintegrate and easy/uneasy.

It should be noted, that English does not have derivational processes involving other kinds of lexical-semantic relations; that is, there are no affixes which create synonyms or hyponyms or form the name of a part from a whole.

Pairs of antonyms fall under several categories:

• Gradable antonyms are two ends of the spectrum (slow and fast). In other words, gradable antonyms name qualities which can be conceived of as 'more or less'; therefore the scale (or dimension) with which each pair is associated has a neutral mid interval. For example hot and cold describe opposite ends of the scale of temperature. Hot and cold are both gradable; for example, we can say "A is hotter than B," "C is fairly cold," "D is very hot," and so on. Between the opposite poles named by hot and cold, there is a mid interval, so that if something is neither hot nor cold, it might be warm, cool, or lukewarm, etc.

Sometimes pairs of gradable antonyms can have variations, like in the semantic row skinny – slim – well built – plump – obese, where well built is a newtral member of the row, and the rest of the words may form pairs of antonyms: skinny vs obese; slim vs obese; slim vs plump; skinny vs plump.

The set of gradable opposites includes many common and prototypical pairs of opposites including big/little, good/bad, high/low, hot/cold, happy/sad, tall/short, and wet/dry.

Although there are also nouns (e.g., friend/enemy) and verbs (e.g., love/hate and like/dislike) which show properties of gradability, most attention has been given to the adjectives of this type, perhaps because the adjectives most clearly exhibit the characteristic properties of gradable opposites, such as implicit comparison, committedness, and markedness (Muehleisen, 1998).

Implicit comparison can easily be seen in examples such as big and little, tall and short, young and old, and hot and cold. Something is described as big or tall or hot in comparison to other things of the same type. This means, for example, that a tall child is tall in comparison to other children of the same age, but may in fact be much shorter than a short adult, and that a hot day describes a hotter than average day, but an overall temperature that is much lower than the one described by a hot oven.

Committedness involves an adjective's behavior in questions. An adjective is said to be committed if it implies a particular value when used in a question, and impartial or uncommitted if it does not have such an implication. For example, tall is uncommitted in a question like "How tall is Pat?" This question is neutral and can be used whether or not the speaker knows Pat's approximate height and whether Pat is tall, short or of average height. In contrast, the adjective short is committed; a speaker would only ask "How short is Pat?" if there is some reason to believe that Pat is shorter than average height. Many pairs of gradable antonyms contain one committed term and one uncommitted, e.g., old/young, heavy/light, fast/slow; many other pairs are made up of two committed terms, e.g., innocent/guilty, beautiful/ugly, happy/sad.

Markedness has been used as cover term for several related phenomena which distinguish the marked member of an antonym pair from the unmarked member.

• The uncommitted member of an antonym pair is said to be unmarked and the committed member is said to be marked, so old is unmarked, while young is marked.

• It has also been noted that if the name of the semantic scale is morphologically related to the unmarked member, so for example, the name of the scale of length is related to the unmarked long rather than the marked short.

• Another criterion of markedness is that the unmarked antonym can generally appear in a wider range of syntactic contexts; in particular, unmarked antonyms can occur with measure phrases but marked ones usually cannot, so we can say that something is 3 feet tall but not 3 feet short.

• Similarly, ratios are usually only possible with the unmarked antonym; we can say that Kim is twice as old as Pat, but we can't say that Pat is twice as young as Kim.

• Morphology also plays a role: in pairs in which one antonym is derived from the other, the derived member is said to be marked, so happy is unmarked and unhappy is marked.

Most research on antonymy has focused on gradable opposites, antonyms in the narrow sense, but a few people, including J. Lyons (1977) and D.A. Cruse (1986) have tried to characterize the other sorts of commonly occurring opposites. These other types lack the special properties found with gradable opposites, but like them, they show a "dependence on dichotomization" (Lyons, 1977). In other words, like antonyms in the narrow sense, these other types of opposites are also pairs of words which share some kind of semantic dimension.

• Complementary antonyms are pairs that express absolute opposites, like alive and dead. Unlike gradable antonyms, these pairs do not include any intermediate members, for example there is no intermediate notion between true and false.

“The essence of a pair of complementaries is that between them they exhaustively divide some conceptual domain into two mutually exclusive compartments, so that what does not fall into one of the compartments must necessarily fall into the other” (Cruse, 1986, p.198).

It is sometimes hard to decide whether a pair of opposites belongs in the set of gradable adjectives or in the set of complementaries, as in the case of clean/dirty. Clean and dirty are both gradable adjectives: we can say that something is fairly clean, very clean, extremely dirty, and we can say that X is cleaner/dirtier than Y. However, the scale of clean and dirty does not seem to have a middle term; whenever something is not clean, it can be described as dirty.

The case of wet and dry is similar in that there are words such as damp and moist which appear to name midpoints of the scale (Muehleisen, 1998). However, it seems that damp and moist are actually just more specific terms for types of wetness. We can gloss damp as 'slightly wet', but we cannot gloss a true midpoint word in this way (e.g., we can't gloss lukewarm as 'slightly hot').

In addition to adjectives, verbs such as pass/fail and obey/disobey, nouns such as day/night, prepositions such as in/out, and adverbs such as backwards/forwards are also sometimes considered examples of complementaries.

Although by definition, complementaries are pairs which allow no logical middle term, in actual use, complementaries are sometimes used like gradable adjectives; for example, we can say that something is almost true, or that someone is barely alive.

• Directional antonyms are generally adverbs or prepositions and include pairs such as up/down, in/out, and clockwise/anticlockwise.

• Reversive antonyms “comprise adjectives or adverbs which signify a quality or verbs or nouns which signify an act or state that reverse or undo the quality, act, or state of the other. Although they are neither contradictory nor contrary terms, they present a clear opposition” (Egan, 1968, p.27a). This class contains many verbs, for example, tie/untie, marry/divorce, enter/leave, appear/disappear.

• Relational antonyms (relative terms, conversive terms) include pairs such as buy/sell, above/below, predecessor/successor, parent/child and teacher/student. They are pairs of words which indicate such a relationship that one of them cannot be used without suggesting the other. Many opposites of this type involve social roles (teacher/student, doctor/patient) or kinship relations (father/mother).

• Such pairs as work/play and town/country represent the group of contextual antonyms. They seem somewhat like opposites because in a particular context, there are two alternatives that provide an either/or choice. At the same time, we know that the two alternatives do not exhaust the logical possibilities (in addition to being at play or at work, a person could be asleep, for example), so they are not felt to be true opposites (Muehleisen, 1998).

• Near-opposites (another term is “impure opposites”) are the opposites "which encapsulate, or include within their meaning, a more elementary opposition." For example, an opposition giant/dwarf can be said to “encapsulate the opposition between large and small (but this opposition does not exhaust their meaning); likewise, shout and whisper encapsulate loud and soft, criticize and praise encapsulate good and bad..." (Cruse, 1986, p.198).

• Contradictory notions, whose relations may be expressed like “A is not B” do not have any logical foundation for antonymy and represent the so-called weak oppositions, like in the pairs expensive – inexpensive, wise – unwise where the meaning of the second member is rather obscure.

• Auto-antonyms are the same words that can mean the opposite of themselves under different contexts or having separate definitions. Here are some examples of auto-antnyms (Wikipedia, 2009):

• enjoin: (1) to prohibit, issue injunction; (2) to order, command:

1. Libya had asked the ICJ Court to “enjoin” the UK and the USA from taking action “calculated to compel and coerce...”³

2. Therefore, boy, never attempt to touch me, save for when I specifically enjoin it.

• fast: (1) moving quickly; (2) fixed firmly in place:

1. Ah Billy, I find my life and strength ebbing so fast. Make Mrs. Jervis, my dear son, as happy as you can.

1. "He took off at once, at a fast gallop towards Claridge's," said Peter.

2. Redmond, once a Maine Road hero, has settled in fast with Joe Royle's side. And he stressed: ‘I feel wanted again...”

2. She opened the door to the living room; John was fast asleep. She climbed the stairs and peered into the room she had chosen for Rodney...

• cleave (1) to split; (2) to adhere:

1. Vermont's green mountains form a spine of three- and four-thousand-foot peaks that cleave the state neatly in half from end to end.

2. He puts the palms out and they cleave against the glass with a moist suction.

• sanction (1) punish, prohibit; (2) permit:

1. ...and the Southern African Development Community has thus far refused to sanction Zimbabwe over its continued harassment and arrest of top opposition leaders.

2. Ruth's parents gave them a sympathetic hearing but refused to sanction their plan.

Another term for auto-antonyms is contronyms, sometimes spelled contranyms (occasionally called antagonyms, Janus words or self-antonyms).

An auto-antonym may be understood as a word with a homonym which is its antonym at the same time. It is a word (of multiple meanings) that is defined as the reverse of one of its other meanings. For example, the word fast can mean moving quickly as in ‘running fast’, or it can mean not moving as in ‘stuck fast’. To buckle can mean (1) to fasten or (2) to bend then break:

1. I got in the car and told the kids to buckle up.

2. I stumbled through the lobby on legs that threatened to buckle under me.

To weather can mean (1) to endure or (2) to erode.

1. To weather the economic downturn, all travel has been cut by 10 percent the past year.

2. The Hohokam disappeared by 1500, leaving their villages to weather back into the earth.

This phenomenon is also called enantionymy or antilogy.

Some pairs of contronyms are true homonyms, i.e. distinct words with different etymology which happen to have the same form. For instance cleave (separate) is from Old English clēofen, while cleave (adhere) is from Old English cleofian, which was pronounced differently. Other examples include let — hinder (as in tennis) or allow.

Other contranyms result from polysemy, where a single word acquires different, and ultimately opposite, senses. For instance quite, which meant clear or free in Middle English, can mean slightly (quite nice) or completely (quite beautiful). Other examples include sanction — permit or penalize; bolt (originally from crossbows) — leave quickly or fixed; fast — moving rapidly or unmoving. Many English examples result from nouns being verbalized into distinct senses ‘add <noun> to’ and ‘remove <noun> from’; e.g dust, seed, stone. Some contranyms result from differences in national varieties of English; for example, to table a bill means to put it up for debate in British English but means to remove it from debate in American English.

Often, one sense is more obscure or archaic, increasing the danger of misinterpretation when it does occur; for instance, the King James Bible often uses let in the sense of forbid. An apocryphal story relates how an English monarch described St Paul's Cathedral as ‘awful, artificial and amusing’, meaning ‘awesome, clever and thought-provoking’ (Wikipedia, 2009).

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