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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.
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 ...
List of metonyms. The following is a list of common metonyms. [n 1] A metonym is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance, "Westminster", a borough of London in the United Kingdom, could be used as a ...
Synonym list in cuneiform on a clay tablet, Neo-Assyrian period [1] 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 ...
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]
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 ...
Archaic, dialectal, or specialized. The following prepositions are not widely used in Present-Day English. Some, such as bating and forby, are archaic and typically only used to convey the tone of a bygone era. Others, such as ayond and side, are generally used only by speakers of a particular variety of English.