antonieme

Antonieme is a linguistic term used to describe a word with the opposite meaning of another word. The pair of words exhibiting this opposite meaning is called an antonym, and the relation of antonymy is a basic semantic relation studied in lexicography and linguistics. The word antonym itself comes from Greek anti, meaning opposite, and onoma, name.

Antonyms are categorized into several types. Gradable antonyms appear on a semantic scale, such as hot and cold, where intermediate values exist (warm, cool). Complementary antonyms are mutually exclusive, like dead and alive; a thing cannot be both. Relational (or converse) antonyms express opposite roles in a relation, such as lender and borrower, send and receive, or teacher and student.

Practical use of antonyms includes improving vocabulary, clarifying meaning, and aiding language learning. In dictionaries, antonyms are listed as a definitional resource. In computational linguistics, antonymy is used in word sense disambiguation, sentiment analysis, and thesaurus construction.

It should be noted that not all words have clear or unique opposites. Some terms have multiple antonyms depending on context, while others have none. Some apparent antonyms may be near opposites rather than exact opposites.

See also synonyms, hyponymy, and lexical relations. References: standard semantics texts and dictionaries.