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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.
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
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 ...
Phatic expression. In linguistics, a phatic expression ( English: / ˈfætɪk /, FAT-ik) is a communication which primarily serves to establish or maintain social relationships. In other words, phatic expressions have mostly socio- pragmatic rather than semantic functions. They can be observed in everyday conversational exchanges, [ 1] as in ...
In linguistics, morphology ( mor-FOL-ə-jee[ 1]) is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. [ 2][ 3] Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, which are the smallest units in a language with some independent meaning.
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.
Semantics. A central topic in semantics concerns the relation between language, world, and mental concepts. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and ...
The meaning relation between hyponyms and hypernyms applies to lexical items of the same word class (that is, part of speech), and holds between senses rather than words. For instance, the word screwdriver used in the previous example refers to the screwdriver tool, and not to the screwdriver drink. Hypernymy and hyponymy are converse relations.