Antonyms are words with opposite meanings, such as hot and cold. Not all opposites work the same way, though. Linguists distinguish 3 kinds: gradable antonyms like young and old, which lie on a scale; complementary antonyms like dead and alive, where one rules out the other; and relational antonyms like buy and sell, which describe one relationship from 2 sides.
Synonyms get a lot of attention: a thesaurus helps you find them, and there are many synonyms for "to walk" alone. But words with opposite meanings are just as interesting, and they are not all alike. This article explains the different kinds of antonyms, with examples that show how they differ.
What is antonymy?
Antonyms are the opposite of synonyms: pairs of words that express the opposite of one another. The relationship between them is called antonymy. A word can have more than one antonym, just as it can have several synonyms. In linguistics, there are 3 different kinds of antonyms.
Gradable antonyms
Gradable antonyms are words with opposite meanings that lie on the same scale, with many grades in between.
The best-known example is the pair young and old. Both lie on a scale of age, and you can use them to compare one thing, in this case a person, with another. So one person can be younger or older than another.
Negating one word does not make the other one true. Someone who is not old is not automatically young, and vice versa. Other gradable pairs are hot and cold, big and small, and happy and sad.
Complementary antonyms
Complementary antonyms have no scale between them. The two words are direct opposites, and they cannot be graded or compared: a person, a thing, or a state is either one or the other.
The best-known example is the pair dead and alive. Leaving aside the "undead", such as zombies and vampires, a person, an animal, or a plant is either dead or alive. Negating one word gives you the meaning of the other: not dead means the same as alive, and not alive means the same as dead.
At the same time, no one can be more dead than someone else. Other complementary pairs are on and off, true and false, and pass and fail.
Relational antonyms
Relational antonyms are not opposites in themselves. They are pairs of words that describe the same relationship from 2 opposite sides. If Anna is Ben's teacher, then Ben is Anna's student. If you buy a bike from someone, they sell it to you.
Husband and wife, parent and child, and buy and sell are all relational antonyms. They cannot be graded either, and negating one word does not create the meaning of the other. Just because a person is not a wife does not make them a husband.
The 3 kinds at a glance
| Kind | Examples | Can it be graded? | Does "not A" mean B? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gradable | young / old, hot / cold | Yes | No |
| Complementary | dead / alive, true / false | No | Yes |
| Relational | buy / sell, teacher / student | No | No |
Prefixes are another way to build opposites in English: un- and in- turn happy into unhappy and possible into impossible. In- or un- explains which prefix to use.