Information on word opposites

Opposite Words in English PDF Download: A word that expresses meaning in opposition to the meaning of a certain word is known as an opposite word. The two words in this instance are referred to as antonyms of one another. Students should acquire as many antonyms and opposite terms as they can because this will help them expand their vocabulary and strengthen their command of the English language. «Opposite words» is an important topic in English Grammar. For competitive exams, in the reading comprehension topic or in the English language section, questions from the Opposite Words in English are common. These terms will be crucial to your academic development as well as the improvement of your reading and writing abilities. However, the list of opposite words in English a to z is provided below. The candidates in search of Antonyms/Opposite Words, frequently want to know about opposite words in English 20, opposite words in English list, words and opposite in English, opposite words in English 100, opposite words in English 10, opposite words in English a to z 200, opposite words in English a to z list, 100 opposite words in English, opposite words in English 20 PDF Download, 100 opposite words in English pdf download, 100 opposite words in English easy, etc., can refer to this article for more info.

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Opposite Words In English a-z

It is not possible for one individual to study the antonyms of every word in the English lexicon due to the scope of the topic «Opposite Words.» There are many opposite terms that we frequently use in our daily lives, but some of us might not be familiar with all of them. We have listed more than 1000 opposing terms in this post for your reference; browse through them and attempt to understand a few new words with opposing connotations. This article will teach you many of the opposing words used in English grammar, which will undoubtedly improve your vocabulary, especially if you’re getting ready for competitive exams like the Bank Exams, SSC Exams, UPSC, and others where you have to study for the English subject. Candidates aspiring to know all the z opposite words, 1000 opposite words in English, and opposite words in English a-z can read further.

Opposite Words In English a to z PDF Download

Candidates preparing for competitive exams can make use of the opposite words in English a to z PDF Download link provided below. With the help of opposite words in English a to z PDF Download link, aspirants can learn the opposite words easily and also they can download the PDF and take printouts if necessary. Make use of the opposite words in English a to z PDF Download link for effective preparation.

Opposite Words In English a to z PDF Download

Opposite Words In English List: Basic Words Antonyms

Here we have added the list of opposite words in English for the reference of the candidates. Below is a collection of some general and simple opposing words in English. Utilize these antonyms to expand your vocabulary in English. You can read the following general 100 opposite words in English easy here.

Opposite Words In English a to z List

Here you can find out the opposite words in English in alphabetical order from a to z. 

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘A’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter A tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘B’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter B tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘C’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter C tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘D’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter D tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘E’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter E tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘F’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter F tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘G’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter G tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘H’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter H tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘I’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter I tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘J’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter J tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘K’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter K tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘L’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter L tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘M’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter M tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘N’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter N tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘O’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter O tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘P’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter P tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘Q’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter Q tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘R’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter R tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘S’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter S tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘T’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter T tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘U’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter U tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘V’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter V tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘W’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter W tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘X’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter X tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘Y’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter Y tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Starting With Letter ‘Z’

Aspirants can check the important opposite words in English starting with the letter Z tabulated below.

Opposite Words In English Exercises

In the English language portion of numerous tests, including SSC (SSC CGL, CHSL, JE, etc.), UPSC (NDA, CDS, etc.), Banking, and more, candidates who are taking government examinations commonly encounter questions relating to antonyms/opposite words. The opposite words that are requested in the vocabulary part are more complex than the straightforward opposite terms mentioned before. A few significant questions from the perspective of competitive exams are presented below for practice using opposite words.

Choose the word opposite in meaning to the given word

Q1. Xenophobic

1. yang
2. Impartial
3. qualified
4. Original

Ans. (b)

Q2. Optimist

1. courteous
2. messy
3. pessimist
4. sink

Ans. (c)

Q3. Wisdom

1. folly
2. Impartial
3. always
4. courteous

Ans. (a)

Q4. Ally

1. enemy
2. together
3. repulsive
4. support

Ans. (a)

Q5. Scatter

1. disperse
2. Inhospitable
3. even
4. collect

Ans. (d)

Q6. Bless

1. blame
2. praise
3. curse
4. enjoy

Ans. (c)

Q7. Cheerful

1. Happy
2. dreary
3. Entertain
4. optimistic

Ans. (b)

Q8. Hinder 

1. trouble
2. help
3. disturbance
4. pessimistic

Ans. (b)

Q9. Calm

1. relax
2. satisfied
3. Righteous
4. Windy

Ans. (d)

Q10. Nefarious

1. Recuperate
2. Stupidity
3. Righteous
4. Sobriety

Ans. (c)

FAQs — Opposite Words in the English Language

Q. What are the opposing words in English?

A word that expresses meaning in opposition to the meaning of a certain word is known as an opposite word. The two words in this instance are referred to as antonyms of one another.

Q. What is the opposite word of benefit?

Some of the opposite words of benefit are, disadvantage, hindrance, drawback, impediment, minus, liability, obstacle, etc.,

Q. What are the opposite words of kind?

The opposite words of kind are unkind, inconsiderate, mean, etc.,

Q. What are the opposite words of tall?

The opposite words of tall are short, small, low, etc.,

Q. What are the opposite words of fat?

The opposite words of fat are thin, skinny, etc.,

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is long entails that it is not short. 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. A member of a pair of opposites can generally be determined by the question What is the opposite of  X ?

The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite, but antonym also has other more restricted meanings. Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold). Complementary antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite but whose meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum (push, pull). Relational antonyms are word pairs where opposite makes sense only in the context of the relationship between the two meanings (teacher, pupil). These more restricted meanings may not apply in all scholarly contexts, with Lyons (1968, 1977) defining antonym to mean gradable antonyms, and Crystal (2003) warning that antonymy and antonym should be regarded with care.

General discussion[edit]

Opposition is a semantic relation in which one word has a sense or meaning that negates or is, in the sense of scale, distant from a related word. Other words are capable of being opposed, but the language in question has an accidental gap in its lexicon. For example, the word devout lacks a lexical opposite, but it is fairly easy to conceptualize a parameter of devoutness where devout lies at the positive pole with a missing member at the negative pole. Opposites of such words can nevertheless sometimes be formed with the prefixes un- or non-, with varying degrees of naturalness. For example, the word undevout appears in Webster’s dictionary of 1828, while the pattern of non-person could conceivably be extended to non-platypus. Conversely, some words appear to be a prefixed form of an opposite, but the opposite term does not exist, such as inept, which appears to be in- + *ept; such a word is known as an unpaired word.

Opposites may be viewed as a special type of incompatibility.^[1] Words that are incompatible create the following type of entailment (where X is a given word and Y is a different word incompatible with word X):^[2]

sentence A is  X   entails  sentence A is not  Y  ^[3]

An example of an incompatible pair of words is cat : dog:

It’s a cat  entails  It’s not a dog ^[4]

This incompatibility is also found in the opposite pairs fast : slow and stationary : moving, as can be seen below:

It’s fast  entails  It’s not slow ^[5]

It’s stationary  entails  It’s not moving

Cruse (2004) identifies some basic characteristics of opposites:

• binarity, the occurrence of opposites as a lexical pair
• inherentness, whether the relationship may be presumed implicitly
• patency, the quality of how obvious a pair is

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»).

Some classes of opposites include:

• antipodals, pairs of words which describe opposite ends of some axis, either literal (such as «left» and «right,» «up» and «down,» «east» and «west») or figurative or abstract (such as «first» and «last,» «beginning» and «end,» «entry» and «exit»)
• disjoint opposites (or «incompatibles»), members of a set which are mutually exclusive but which leave a lexical gap unfilled, such as «red» and «blue,» «one» and «ten,» or «Monday» and «Friday.»
• reversives, pairs of verbs which denote opposing processes, in which one is the reverse of the other. They are (or may be) performed by the same or similar subject(s) without requiring an object of the verbs, such as «rise» and «fall,» «accelerate» and «decelerate,» or «shrink» and «grow.»
• converses (or relational opposites or relational antonyms), 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.
• overlapping antonyms, a pair of comparatives in which one, but not the other, implies the positive:
  • An example is «better» and «worse.» The sentence «x is better than y» does not imply that x is good, but «x is worse than y» implies that x is bad. Other examples are «faster» and «slower» («fast» is implied but not «slow») and «dirtier» and «cleaner» («dirty» is implied but not «clean»). The relationship between overlapping antonyms is often not inherent, but arises from the way they are interpreted most generally in a language. There is no inherent reason that an item be presumed to be bad when it is compared to another as being worse (it could be «less good»), but English speakers have combined the meaning semantically to it over the development of the language.

Types of antonyms[edit]

An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings. Each word in the pair is the antithesis of the other. A word may have more than one antonym. There are three categories of antonyms identified by the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings.

Gradable antonyms[edit]

A gradable antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum. Temperature is such a continuous spectrum so hot and cold, two meanings on opposite ends of the spectrum, are gradable antonyms. Other examples include: heavy : light, fat : skinny, dark : light, young : old, early : late, empty : full, dull : interesting.

Complementary antonyms[edit]

A complementary antonym, sometimes called a binary or contradictory antonym (Aarts, Chalker & Weiner 2014), is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings, where the two meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum. There is no continuous spectrum between odd and even but they are opposite in meaning and are therefore complementary antonyms. Other examples include: mortal : immortal, exit : entrance, exhale : inhale, occupied : vacant.

Relational antonyms[edit]

A relational antonym is one of a pair of words that refer to a relationship from opposite points of view. There is no lexical opposite of teacher, but teacher and pupil are opposite within the context of their relationship. This makes them relational antonyms. Other examples include: husband : wife, doctor : patient, predator : prey, teach : learn, servant : master, come : go, parent : child.

Auto-antonyms[edit]

An auto-antonym is a word that can have opposite meanings in different contexts or under separate definitions:

• enjoin (to prohibit, issue injunction; to order, command)
• fast (moving quickly; fixed firmly in place)
• cleave (to split; to adhere)
• sanction (punishment, prohibition; permission)
• stay (remain in a specific place, postpone; guide direction, movement)

See also[edit]

• -onym
• Antithesis
• Litotes
• Property (philosophy)
• Semantic differential
• Thesaurus

Notes[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Aarts, Bas; Chalker, Sylvia; Weiner, Edmund (2014), The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, Oxford University Press, p. 80, ISBN 978-0-19-965823-7
• Crystal, David. (2003). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (5th ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
• Cruse, D. Alan. (1986). Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Cruse, D. Alan. (1992). Antonymy revisited: Some thoughts on the relationship between words and concepts. In A. J. Lehrer & E. F. Kittay (Eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization (pp. 289–306). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Cruse, D. Alan. (2002). Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition II: Reversivity. In D. A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-R. Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexikologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen: Lexicology: An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies (Vol. 1, pp. 507–510). Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Cruse, D. Alan. (2004). Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Cruse, D. Alan; & Togia, Pagona. (1995). Towards a cognitive model of antonymy. Journal of Lexicology 1, 113-141.
• Davies, M. (2007) ‘The Attraction of Opposites: The ideological function of conventional and created oppositions in the construction of in-groups and out-groups in news texts’, in Jeffries, L., McIntyre, D. and Bousfield, D. (eds) Stylistics and Social Cognition, pp. 79–100.
• Davies, M. (2013) Oppositions and Ideology in News Discourse. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Jeffries, L. (2009, forthcoming) Opposition in Discourse: The Construction of Oppositional Meaning London: Continuum.
• Jones, S. (2002), Antonymy: A Corpus-based perspective London and New York: Routledge.
• Lehrer, Adrienne J. (1985). Markedness and antonymy. Journal of Linguistics, 21, 397-421.
• Lehrer, Adrienne J. (2002). Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition I: Gradable antonymy and complementarity. In D. A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-R. Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexikologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen: Lexicology: An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies (Vol. 1, pp. 498–507). Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Lehrer, Adrienne J.; & Lehrer, Keith. (1982). Antonymy. Linguistics and Philosophy, 5, 483-501.
• Lyons, John. (1963). Structural semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lyons, John. (1968). Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lyons, John. (1977). Semantics (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mettinger, Arthur. (1994). Aspects of semantic opposition in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Murphy, M. Lynne. (2003). Semantic relations and the lexicon: Antonymy, synonymy, and other paradigms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics: A new outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Saeed, John I. (2003). Semantics (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell