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Antonym
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  • Gradable antonyms are two ends of the spectrum (''slow'' and ''fast'') but can have variations.

  • Complement ary antonyms are pairs that express absolute opposites, like ''single'' and ''married''.

  • Relational antonyms are pairs in which one describes a relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed, such as ''parent'' and ''child'', ''teacher'' and ''student'', or ''buy'' and ''sell''.


Although the word ''antonym'' was only coined by Philologist s in the 19th Century , such relationships are a fundamental part of a language, in contrast to Synonym s, which are a result of history and drawing of fine distinctions, or Homonym s, which are mostly Etymological accidents or coincidences.
A few words with two antonymous meanings may also be designated Contronym s:

  • enjoin (to prohibit; to order)

  • fast (moving quickly; fixed firmly in place)

  • cleave (to split; to adhere)


Languages often have ways of creating antonyms as an easy extension of lexicon.
An example is the English prefixes ''in-'' and ''un-''.
''Unreal'' is the antonym of ''real'' and ''indocile'' is of ''docile''.

Some planned languages abundantly use such devices to reduce vocabulary multiplication.
Esperanto has ''mal-'' (compare ''bona'' = "good" and ''malbona'' = "bad"), Damin has ''kuri-'' (''tjitjuu'' "small", ''kuritjitjuu'' "large") and Newspeak has ''un-'' (as in ''ungood'', "bad").


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