Synonyms and Antonyms (Written Conventions of English)

SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS (Written Conventions of English)

A synonym is a word or phrase that means the same or nearly the same as another. These can be found in a book called a thesaurus. For "book" (noun), we find words like: album, manual, novel, paperback, textbook, and volume. As you can see, these do not have exactly the same meaning as book, but you could put book in place of them.

Antonyms are opposites, and come in three types:

• graded antonyms lie on a continuous spectrum, like hot/cold, fat/thin, young/old, and dull/interesting;
• complementary antonyms' meanings do not lie on a spectrum, like push/pull, odd/even, exit/enter, and exhale/inhale; and
• relational antonyms make sense only in the context of a relationship, like husband/wife, doctor/patient, teach/learn, and parent/child.

Here's a fun one: auto-antonyms or "Janus words" can be their own opposites, depending on context:

• sanction can mean to permit or prohibit;
• fast can mean moving quickly or stuck in one place;
• dust can mean put dust on or take dust off;

and so on.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)