* Id: Antonyms * Revision: 2 * State: approved * * Log: * Revision 1 1997/07/30 Vladimir L. Shirokogorov * Initial submitted version. This was lost, sent to me on 1999/09/30, * and put into the queue on 1999/10/20. * * Checked-out 1999/10/25 Roel van der Meulen * * Checked-in with * Revision 2 1999/12/01 Roel van der Meulen * Edited and author-approved. * * Checked-out 2000/03/10 Mark Seaborn %t Antonyms %n 8R ready for review %s How To Choose The Right Antonym %a Vladimir L. Shirokogorov (shirokogorov@pol.ru) %d 19970730 %i Words With Opposite Meanings %x Water %x Definitely Correct Speech %x English Language, The Curiosities Of The %x English Language, Understanding Spoken %x Idioms And Idiots With The English Language %e Antonyms are pairs of words which have opposite meanings, for instance: day and night, big and small, dead and alive, bright and dark, no items and etcetera. Unfortunately sometimes people don't choose the correct antonyms. Any single word has a pure meaning that people have agreed upon. Unfortunately, people often forget about this pure meaning. They construct an antonym using a word that they consider to have the opposite meaning, but which only has obtained this meaning in everyday speech. An example of this can even be found in PGG: see the article on "Water". There it is said, in the second paragraph: "One thing is that water is known to be is wet. But in cold places, water can be more hard than wet". In this very case, so long as we speak about water which is both liquid and wet, the words "wet" and "hard" have been regarded as antonyms, because water is either "wet" (when above zero), or "hard" (when below zero). It would be more correct to say that "in cold places, water can be more solid than liquid". The adjective "liquid" is an antonym to the adjective "solid", as well as the adjective "wet" is an antonym to the adjective "dry". Boiling lead is definitely liquid, but it is on no account wet. A washed floor is, of course, wet, but it is not liquid. Concluding: both antonyms should belong to the same scale or category. But what should we do if we want to find an antonym to, let us say, "a table"? In the scale of tableness any table ranges 100%. So we should pick something ranging very low according to this scale. If we go from 100% to 0%, we pass: a table; something very much like table; something like a table; something that reminds us of a table; something that can hardly be called a table; and not a table at all. So "not a table at all" is a correct antonym for "a table". %e *EOA*