Attractive opposites.Opposites attract. Opposites also attract people who love to mess around with word meanings and letters. Here's a brief logological taxonomy taxonomy: see classification. taxonomy In biology, the classification of organisms into a hierarchy of groupings, from the general to the particular, that reflect evolutionary and usually morphological relationships: kingdom, phylum, class, order, of 15 yin-yanging patterns. (1) Perhaps the best-known category of opposites beyond simple antonyms, the concept of word ladders was invented by Lewis Carroll. Start with a word and change one letter at each step, while keeping the other letters in the same order, transforming the starter word ultimately into another word, often the opposite of the original. Each rung in the ladder must be a word in its own right:
HEAD HATE BLACK
heal rate blank
teal rave blink
tell cave clink
tall cove chink
TAIL LOVE chine
whine
WHITE
(2) Contronyms, pairs of words that have the same spelling and pronunciation but opposite meanings: with. alongside; against: a. England fought with France against Germany. b. England fought with France. out. visible; invisible: a. The stars are out. b. The lights are out. clip. fasten; separate: a. Clip the coupon to the newspaper, b. Clip the coupon from the newspaper. (3) Convergents, two apparently opposite words or expressions that have the same meaning. (I know of no word for this phenomenon, so I have made up the term convergents.): Loosen and unloosen mean the same thing. A good licking Licking, river, c.320 mi (515 km) long, rising in E Ky. and flowing NW to the Ohio River opposite Cincinnati; the North and South Forks are its chief tributaries. and a bad licking are the same thing. A slim chance Noun 1. slim chance - little or no chance of success fat chance probability, chance - a measure of how likely it is that some event will occur; a number expressing the ratio of favorable cases to the whole number of cases possible; "the probability that an and afar chance are the same thing. (4) Rhyming antonyms (recently brought to my attention by "Potshots" creator and artist Ashleigh Brilliant Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant (born December 9, 1933 in London, England) is an author and syndicated cartoonist living in Santa Barbara, California. He is best known for Pot-Shots , who provides the concept and examples that follow), rhyming words that are the opposite of each other: adore/abhor glad/sad hired/fired (5) Antigrams, anagrammed words or phrases that communicate opposite meanings: words: united/untied ruthful/hurtful marital/martial (some might interpret that last pairing as synonymous) words and phrases Words and Phrases® A multivolume set of law books published by West Group containing thousands of judicial definitions of words and phrases, arranged alphabetically, from 1658 to the present. : antagonist/not against filled/ill-fed funeral/real fun (6) Anticharades, words that when cleft into two or more parts, reveal their own opposites: amok/am o.k. inaction/in action therapist/the rapist (7) Punetuational opposites, statements that convey opposite meanings when their punctuation punctuation [Lat.,=point], the use of special signs in writing to clarify how words are used; the term also refers to the signs themselves. In every language, besides the sounds of the words that are strung together there are other features, such as tone, accent, and is altered: A dog knows its master./A dog knows it's master. Woman: without her, man is helpless./Woman without her man is helpless. I would like to tell you that I love you. I can't stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on earth./ I would like to tell you that I love you. I can't. Stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on earth. (8) Beheadment opposites, words that, when their first letter is lopped off, become their own opposites: bonus/onus covert/overt preview/review (9) Antiroos (another term I've neologized), kangaroo words A kangaroo word is a word that contains letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning. For example: the word masculine contains the word male, which is a synonym of the first word. Similarly, the word observe contains its synonym see. that, when internal letters are deleted, retain the original order of the remaining letters and become their own opposites: courteous/curt saintliness/sin threat/treat (10) Letter substitution opposites, wherein the replacement of a letter by another letter begets an opposite: auspicious/suspicious collision/collusion milestone/millstone The intrepid logologist can imagine other possible contrastive clusters that may tremble into birth if WORD WAYS readers can supply authentic examples: (11) Curtailment opposites, words that, when their last letter is lopped off, become their own opposites. Infinitesimal/infinite is a lovely example of multiple curtailment, but single-letter curtailments beyond the drab categories of plural-singular--words-word--and female-male--fiancee/fiance--appear to be in short or no supply. (12) Homophonic hom·o·phon·ic adj. 1. Having the same sound. 2. Having or characterized by a single melodic line with accompaniment. [From Greek homoph antonyms, two words that sound the same, are spelled differently, and have opposite meanings. To my knowledge, there is only one authentic pairing: raise/raze. Other attempts, such as reckless/wreckless, are contrived. (13) Palindromic pal·in·dro·mic adj. Relapsing; recurring. opposites, words that, when their letters are reversed, become logological and lexical lex·i·cal adj. 1. Of or relating to the vocabulary, words, or morphemes of a language. 2. Of or relating to lexicography or a lexicon. [lexic(on) + -al1. mirror images. God/dog and stressed/desserts are bubbles off antonymic plumb. (14) Shiftword opposites, words that, when each letter advances the same number of steps along the alphabet, reach their flipsides. Ape + 15 = pet and God + 12 = sap do not achieve satisfying antonymy an·to·nym n. A word having a meaning opposite to that of another word: The word wet .. (15) Heteronymic opposites, word pairs that are not etymologically related but that are spelled the same, sound different, and have opposite meanings. Deserts/deserts (as in "just deserts Noun 1. just deserts - an outcome in which virtue triumphs over vice (often ironically) poetic justice final result, outcome, resultant, termination, result - something that results; "he listened for the results on the radio" ") is a not-so-near miss, and resign/re-sign are etymologically related. RICHARD LEDERER San Diego, California “San Diego” redirects here. For other uses, see San Diego (disambiguation). San Diego is a coastal Southern California city located in the southwestern corner of the continental United States. As of 2006, the city has a population of 1,256,951. |
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