antonimie

Antonimie, a term used in Romanian linguistics, designates the semantic relation between words with opposite meanings; in English this relation is called antonymy. The word derives from Greek anti- 'opposite' and onoma 'name'. In linguistics, antonymy studies how words contrast in meaning and how this contrast is encoded in the lexicon and grammar.

There are several kinds of antonyms. Complementary (or binary) antonyms are pairs with no middle ground, such as dead/alive or true/false. Gradable antonyms contrast along a spectrum, like hot/cold or big/small, allowing intermediate degrees. Relational (converse) antonyms express reciprocal relationships, such as buy/sell or teacher/pupil. Some words can function as auto-antonyms (contranyms), having opposite meanings in different senses, for example dust (to remove dust vs to apply dust) or left (remaining versus departed). These categories show that oppositeness is not always a single, fixed relation but can depend on context.

Antonyms can arise through negation, including prefixes like un-, in-, or non-, but morphological negation does not always yield a true semantic opposite. In dictionaries and lexical resources, antonyms are commonly listed as related entries to indicate this opposite meaning relationship. Antonymy plays a central role in sense discrimination, information structure, and language learning, and it manifests differently across languages in how opposites are encoded and labeled.