antonüüm

Antonüüm is the Estonian term for an antonym: a word whose meaning is opposite to the meaning of another word. Antonyms are a basic semantic relation that helps express contrast and structure meaning in language. They are sense-specific: a word may have more than one antonym depending on which sense is intended.

Etymology: The English word antonym comes from Greek anti- “opposite” and onoma “name.” In Estonian, antonüüm is a direct translation of this concept, used in linguistic description and lexicography.

Types: Antonyms are commonly categorized as:

- Gradable antonyms: words that lie on a scalar continuum, such as hot–cold, large–small, bright–dim. They allow intermediate terms and degrees.

- Complementary (non-gradable) antonyms: binary opposites with no middle ground, such as dead–alive, true–false, present–absent.

- Relational (converse) antonyms: pairs that describe opposite perspectives in a relationship, such as buy–sell, teacher–student, lender–borrower.

Usage: Antonyms illuminate contrasts in definitions, aid vocabulary learning, and support semantic analyses in dictionaries and corpora. Some word pairs function as near-antonyms or partial opposites (e.g., warm–cool, optimistic–pessimistic), depending on context and domain.

In summary, antonüüm/antonyms are core semantic relations that reveal oppositeness in meaning and vary by sense and usage. See also: synonyms, semantic relations, lexical fields.