Link Centre Dictionary

antonym

an·to·nym

UK/ˈæn.təˌnɪm/ uncommon

noun

1.

two words that express opposing concepts

  • “to him the opposite of gay was depressed”

Origin

From French antonyme (1840s and 1850s), which was modeled on earlier synonyme and influenced by the etymons of Ancient Greek ἀντωνυμία (antōnumía, “pronoun”); credit for popularization of the French loanword's naturalization into English is given principally to Charles John Smith and his 1867 book Synonyms and Antonyms: Or, Kindred Words and Their Opposites. Collected and Contrasted. By surface analysis, ant- + -onym.

Phrases

  • binary antonym
  • complementary antonym
  • contradictory antonym
  • converse antonym
  • gradable antonym
  • polar antonym
  • relational antonym
  • Wiktionary:Semantic relations

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.