What is an antonym, every schoolboy knows

At school in Russian language lessons, to study what an antonym begin with from the 2nd class, and subsequently periodically supplement the knowledge of this concept. So, in Greek, it literally means "against" - anti and "name" - onoma. You can apply this term only for a couple of words. With respect to one word - never! So, antonyms are words with a lexically opposite meaning (for example, harmful - an antonym useful).

In such pairs only words of one part of speech can enter:

• Noun with nouns;
• Adjective with an adjective;
• Verb with a verb ;
• Adverb with an adverb;
• Communion with communion;
• Gerundive with gerundive;
• Preposition with a preposition.

Do not form such pairs:

• Almost all pronouns;
• Words that denote a sexual characteristic (a woman and a man are not an antonymic couple);
• Nouns that have an objective meaning (for example, a book, a house, etc.);
• Proper names (it is impossible to pick up an oppositional pair with the words "Moscow", "Russia", "Pavel", "Murka", etc.);
• Numerals.

Restrictions on the formation of such pairs:

• Different stylistic colors;
• Words with diminutive and increasing suffixes (for example, rain - rain - rain).

The antonymy of polysemantic words

Of particular note are many-valued words. For example, a word has several fresh meanings. To each of them you can choose your antonymic couple:

- fresh bread - stale bread;

- fresh linen - dirty laundry;

- Fresh wind - hot wind;

Considering what an antonym of a multivalued word is, it is important to understand that it is also possible for a pair to be formed by the same word between its different meanings. For example, the verb "browse". The first meaning of this word is "to get acquainted, to see something". The second meaning is "not to see, not to notice, to miss".

The difference of antonyms in structure:

• Single root (for example, noiseless - noisy);
• Raznokornevye (for example, courage - fear).

This phenomenon in the language made it possible to build stylistic figures. It is no longer just knowledge of what antonyms are, it is the ability to create different images with the help of a language.

The first phenomenon is the antithesis

It is built on a sharp contrast between the meanings of words, thanks to it, the names of the classic works War and Peace, Fathers and Children, Thick and Thin, etc. are so remembered.

The second phenomenon is an oxymoron

This figure is based on a combination of opposing words. Among the literary names with the use of an oxymoron can be called "Hot Snow", "Living Corpse", "Dead Souls".

Thanks to a clear knowledge of what an antonymus is, you can easily identify these stylistic figures during the study of literature.

In addition, it is customary to distinguish the following antonyms in Russian:

• General language - commonly used in everyday life and in literary texts (for example, night - day);
• Contextual - words that become antonyms only within a certain context (for example, "Wolves and Sheep").

The polysemantic word, homonym, synonym, antonym make the speech richer and more interesting, they are often used in proverbs and sayings, artistic texts and colloquial speech.

To fix the antonyms there are specialized dictionaries recommended by the Ministry of Education, edited by Vvedensky LA, Kolesnikov NP, Lvov MR.