Antonyms

Antonyms are words belonging to the same of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions.

V. N. Comissarov in his dictionary of antonyms classified them into two groups: absolute or root antonyms (late, early) and derivational antonyms (to please – to displease, honest – to dishonest, professional – non-professional). Absolute antonyms have different roots and derivational antonyms have the same roots but different affixes. In most cases negative prefixes form antonyms (un-, dis-, non-). Sometimes they are formed by means of antonymous suffixes –ful, and – less (painful - painless).

The number of antonyms with the suffixes –ful and less- is not very large, and sometimes even if we have a word with one of these suffixes its antonym is formed not by substituting – full by – less, e.g. successful – unsuccessful (the antonym of the adjective with the suffix –less is formed with the help of the suffix - ish). The same is true about antonyms with the negative prefixes, e.g. to man is not an antonym of the word to unman, to disappoint is not an antonym of the word to appoint.

The difference between derivational and root antonyms is not only in their structure, but in semantics as well. Derivational antonyms express contradictory notions. If some notions can be arranged in a group of more than two members, the most distant members of the group will be absolute antonyms, e.g. ugly, plain, good-looking, pretty, beautiful, the antonyms are ugly and beautiful.

Not every word in a language can have antonyms. This type of opposition can be met in qualitative adjectives and their derivatives, e.g. beautiful – ugly, to beautifty – to uglify, beauty – ugliness. It can be also met in words denoting feelings and states, e.g. respect –scorn, to respect – to scorn, respectful – scornful, to live – to die, alive – dead, life – death. It can be also met among words denoting direction in space and time, e.g. here – there, up – down, now – never, before – after, day – night, early – late etc.