Concept in Definition ABC

Antonyms are those words that express an opposite or contrary idea to that expressed by another word, while, as occurs with synonyms, they must correspond in terms of category grammatical to be considered antonyms; for example, Vice is the antonym of virtue, of course, of dark, love hateful, big from small, leisure from work, day at night, young from old, admiration of contempt, high of low, among others.

Almost all the words with which we communicate have an antonym, or at least different words that go softening a little the qualities of the object they represent, until finally the term is completely opposite. Let's see it with some examples: cold, warm, hot; high, medium, low.

If we start to observe a scale chromatic we will appreciate very clearly that between black and white there appears a wide range and variety of grays, then, the same can be applied to theme that we just mentioned.

But not all antonyms are strongly opposed only, but there are some, such as father and son, buying and selling,

that complement each other, that is, one cannot exist without the other in any way.

There are a wide variety of dictionaries specialized in this type of words, which by the way make it very easy to find them, when necessary in a text or conversation find the exact opposite meaning. In addition, the knowledge of the antonyms of almost all the words allows to enrich the language and in some cases understand much better the meaning of some words, because for example there are some who specifically understand what is the happiness they will need to know what is not and for this they will inevitably have to know what suffering is.

So, there are three types of antonyms: gradual (the two words are gradually opposed, the case we mentioned cold-temperate-hot), complementary (the meaning of one overrides the other) and reciprocal (the meaning of one of the words supposes the existence of the other, one cannot be given without the other, parent-child).

When the opposite applies to people, whether they are protagonists of literary texts, films, novels, among others, they are called antagonists.

Topics in Antonyms