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Antonyms: Opposites

Antonyms are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as hot and cold, black and white, and in and out. Words may have different antonyms, depending on their meaning for example, both long and tall are antonyms of short.

Antonyms are broadly divided into two categories:

Graded Antonyms: These express relationships along a continuum.
Complementary Antonyms: These express binary relationships in which there is no middle-ground.
(A third category of relational antonyms is described later.)

Below is a selection of 32 example pairs of each of these two types of antonym.

Graded Antonyms

Pairs of graded antonyms belong on a scale. For example, good and bad are antonyms. However, if an essay, say, is not good, that does not mean it is bad. There is a whole scale including appalling, terrible, bad, poor, satisfactory, fair, good, excellent, incredible, etc.

1. dark light

2. intelligent stupid

3. dangerous safe

4. evil good

5. beautiful ugly

6. best worst

7. clever foolish

8. early late

9. easy difficult

10. empty full

11. fat skinny

12. young old

13. happy sad

14. hard soft

15. last first

16. foolish wise

17. quick slow

18. warm cool

19. wide narrow

20. abundant scarce

21. joy grief

22. knowledge ignorance

23. lazy industrious

24. stiff limp

25. miserable happy

26. violent gentle

27. chaos order

28. soften harden

29. nervous calm

30. reckless cautious

31. luxury squalor

32. sweet bitter

Complementary Antonyms

Pairs of complementary antonyms represent the two opposite possibilities. (There is no continuum, or middle-ground, as in the examples above.) For example, one is either married, or single.

1. man woman

2. push pull

3. dead alive

4. off on

5. raise lower

6. forget remember

7. day night

8. sadism masochism

9. right wrong

10. absent present

11. against for

12. exit entrance

13. sink float

14. employ dismiss

15. married single

16. question answer

17. true false

18. send receive

19. attack defend

20. accidental intentional

21. former latter

22. depart arrive

23. exterior interior

24. extinguish ignite

25. solid fluid

26. thaw freeze

27. vacant occupied

28. inward outward

29. input output

30. exhale inhale

31. pass fail

32. read write

Relational Antonyms

Pairs of relational antonyms are often considered as a third type. However, they are really a subcategory of complementary antonyms.

In this type of antonymy, there is a relationship in which the two opposites must both exist. For example, if someone is selling, there must be someone buying.

Relational antonyms describe the same situation from opposite sides. Here are 16 examples:

1. servant master

2. husband wife

3. doctor patient

4. buy sell

5. parent child

6. borrow lend

7. predator prey

8. instructor pupil

9. above below

10. give receive

11. teach learn

12. come go

13. toward away

14. employer employee

15. customer supplier

16. divisor dividend

Closely related to antonyms are autoantonyms, an intriguing class of words that are the opposite of themselves! See also:

Autoantonyms page (words that are the opposite of themselves!)
More on heteronyms, homonyms, antonyms, synonyms, capitonyms, etc.
Homonyms page
Heteronyms page
Oronyms and homophones

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Antonyms: Opposites

Graded Antonyms

Complementary Antonyms

Relational Antonyms

Related Pages