antonym

American  

[an-tuh-nim] / ˈæn tə nɪm /

noun

• antonyms
  plural

1. a word opposite in meaning to another. Fast is an antonym of slow.

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antonym British  

/ ˈæntənɪm /

noun

1. a word that means the opposite of another word

   ``empty'' is an antonym of ``full''

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Usage

What is an antonym? An antonym is a word that has the opposite meaning of another word. For example, the word small means of limited size, while big means of large size. Happy, a feeling of gladness, is an antonym of sad, a feeling of sorrow. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs can all have antonyms, though not all do. A word can also have multiple antonyms. For example, the words fast, quick, speedy, swift, and rapid are all antonyms of the word slow. Even antonym has an antonym! The opposite of antonym is synonym, which is a word that has the same meaning as another word. For example, a synonym of the word fast would be quick—both describe something that moves with speed. If you are looking for some spicy new antonyms to use in your writing, you can find them using Thesaurus.com.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• antonymy
  noun
• antonymic
  adjective
• antonymous
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• antonyms
  plural

Etymology

Origin of antonym

First recorded in 1865–70; ant- + (syn)onym

Compare meaning

How does antonym compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• synonym vs. antonym

Explanation

A word that has the exact opposite meaning of another word is its antonym. Life is full of antonyms, from the "stop" and "go" of a traffic signal to side-by-side restroom doors labeled "men" and "women." Most antonyms are pretty obvious, like "good" and "bad," or "black" and "white." Some words can be transformed into their antonyms simply by adding the prefixes "un," "in," or "non," as when "likable" is changed into its antonym, "unlikable." The word antonym itself takes the Greek word anti, meaning "opposite," and adds it to -onym, which comes from the Greek onoma, or "name." So antonym literally means "opposite-name."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

antonym antonyms

I'm not sure "graceful" has a strong enough antonym to describe my first lurches toward a world flipped upside down.

From Salon ● Mar. 31, 2023

I’m not sure there’s a precise antonym for “nice.”

From Washington Post ● Dec. 20, 2020

A 2015 Kellblog entry from tech executive Dave Kellogg also puts the word in business terms, defining it along with its antonym, a “simplifier.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 8, 2019

“Nature” became the antonym of “society” in the minds of philosophers, in the policies of European empires, and the calculations of global financial centres.

From The Guardian ● May 8, 2018

It is a word of which the antonym is drifting.

From Painted Windows Studies in Religious Personality by Harold Begbie

The antonyms of diversity, equity and inclusion are uniformity, inequality and exclusion.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 4, 2024

"Vocabularies, dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms, encyclopaedias are educational tools of reference and Treccani.it, as such, is consulted in schools, libraries and in all of our homes."

From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2021

Among the antonyms for “nice” in Roget’s Thesaurus are “ugly,” “horrible,” “nasty” and “repulsive.”

From Washington Post ● Dec. 20, 2020

It wasn’t long before I noticed, even in my own idiolect, that “awesome” and “sucks” were related as antonyms.

From Scientific American ● Sep. 19, 2017

Thus voluntary and involuntary, which are antonyms of each other, are both partial synonyms of spontaneous.

From English Synonyms and Antonyms With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions by James Champlin Fernald