Antonym
a word opposite in meaning to another. Fast is an antonym of slow.
Compare (def 1).
Historical Examples
Logically the other side of white is not white, while the antonym is the extreme black.
Public Speaking Clarence Stratton
By and by, which was once a synonym, has become an antonym of immediately, meaning at some (perhaps remote) future time.
English Synonyms and Antonyms James Champlin Fernald
In strict usage, daily is the antonym of nightly as diurnal is of nocturnal.
English Synonyms and Antonyms James Champlin Fernald
noun
a word that means the opposite of another word: “empty” is an antonym of “full”
n.
1867, coined to serve as opposite of synonym, from Greek anti- “equal to, instead of, opposite” (see anti-) + -onym “name” (see name (n.)). Perhaps introduced to English in the book “Synonyms and Antonyms” (1867) by the Ven. C.J. Smith, M.A.
UNDER the head of Synonyms and Antonyms, Archdeacon Smith arranges words which form an antithesis to one another. The word “antonym” is, we believe, a new formation but useful. [“Journal of Sacred Literature,” July 1867]
French antonyme (1842), German antonym (by 1859) are older. The un-Greek alternative counterterm has been left to fade.
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