English
What is an antonym?
Quick answer
An antonym is a word that means the opposite of another word, like hot and cold, up and down, or happy and unhappy.
In one sentence
Antonyms are pairs of words with opposite meanings.
Explained
Hot and cold, open and closed, win and lose, before and after: each pair is a set of antonyms. They work for different kinds of words: adjectives (full / empty), verbs (push / pull), nouns (friend / enemy) and adverbs (quickly / slowly).
There are a few kinds of opposite:
- Scale opposites sit at two ends of a line with steps in between: hot – warm – cool – cold. Something can be "quite hot" or "a bit cold".
- Either-or opposites have no middle: on / off, alive / dead, true / false.
- Pair opposites describe the same thing from two sides: buy / sell, teacher / pupil, above / below.
Many antonyms are made with prefixes: happy → unhappy, possible → impossible, agree → disagree, legal → illegal. Others are completely different words: good / bad, big / small.
A word with more than one meaning can have more than one antonym. Light can be the opposite of heavy (a light bag) or of dark (a light room). Right can be the opposite of wrong or of left. Always look at the sentence.
Antonyms are useful in writing for contrast: The house was silent, but the garden was noisy. They are also handy for working out new words: if ancient is the opposite of modern, you know roughly what it means.
sun
snow
fire
Examples
| Word | Antonym |
|---|---|
| early | late |
| ancient | modern |
| generous | mean / selfish |
| accept | refuse |
| visible | invisible |
| arrive | leave / depart |
- The first box was empty, but the second was full.
- Mia remembered her lines; Sam forgot his.
Common mistakes
- Ignoring the meaning in context. The opposite of fair in a fair game is unfair; in fair hair it is dark.
- Wrong prefix: unpossible should be impossible; dislegal should be illegal.
- Thinking every word has an opposite. Table, Tuesday and banana do not.
Quick quiz
Antonyms
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Question 1 of 4
What is the antonym of tall?
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For grown-ups
Related topics
Synonyms
A synonym is a word that means the same or nearly the same as another word, like big and large, or happy and cheerful.
Prefixes
A prefix is a group of letters added to the start of a word to change its meaning, like un- in unhappy, re- in replay or dis- in disappear.
Adjectives
An adjective is a word that describes a noun, telling you what kind, which one or how many, like a huge elephant, a sour lemon or three red balloons.
Adverbs
An adverb gives more information about a verb, adjective or another adverb, telling how, when, where or how often, like slowly, tomorrow, outside or always.
Alliteration
Alliteration is when several words close together start with the same sound, like six silly snakes or big brown bear. It makes writing catchy and memorable.
Apostrophes
An apostrophe has two jobs. It shows where letters are missing in a contraction (can't, it's) and shows that something belongs to someone (the dog's bone, the girls' team).