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Antonyms

What Are Antonyms? (with Examples)

homeglossaryAntonyms
Antonyms are words with opposite meanings.
  • Bad and good are antonyms.
  • Coward is an antonym of hero.

Examples of Antonyms

A word can have more than one antonym. The following are all antonyms of good:
  • bad
  • badness
  • corrupt
  • evil
  • evilness
  • malicious
  • sour
  • wicked
The first point is that good, like many words, can be a noun or an adjective, so its antonyms will be a mix of nouns and adjectives too. The second point is that antonyms do not have to be exact opposites. There are two types of antonyms:
  • Graded antonyms
  • Complementary antonyms
antonyms example

Graded Antonyms

Graded antonyms do not have to be opposites of equal weighting. They allow for shades of oppositeness. For example, the following are all antonyms for good:
  • unsatisfactory
  • poor
  • bad
  • terrible

Complementary Antonyms

Complementary antonyms offer no middle ground. With complementary antonyms, each word only has one antonym. (The reason for that is often a relationship between the two words.) For example:
  • 1 / 0
  • before / after
  • buy / sell
  • dead / alive
  • doctor / patient
  • husband / wife
  • man / woman
  • off / on
  • predator / prey
  • yes / no

Adding a Prefix to Form an Antonym

Quite often, an antonym can be made by adding a prefix. For example:
  • likely / unlikely
  • able / unable
  • entity / nonentity
  • combatant / noncombatant
  • typical / atypical
  • symmetrical / asymmetrical
  • decent / indecent
  • discreet / indiscreet

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