Antonym is a word that has the opposite meaning of another word and creates a semantic contrast in a pair of lexical units.

Antonyms in Russian

Two words with contradictory meanings form an antonymous pair. A word can have more than one antonym, which is due to the ambiguity of lexical units in the Russian language. For example, the antonym of the word "light" (luggage) in the literal sense is "heavy"; in a figurative sense, its antonymic connection with other words is observed: light (wind) - strong (wind), easy (task) - difficult (task).

Antonyms are one part of speech; often refer to an adjective, since the antonymic relations of words are based on common qualitative features (good - bad). Bright contrasting concepts also express nouns (good - evil), adverbs (easy - difficult), etc. Not all words provide for the presence of antonyms, for example, some specific nouns (house, apple), colors do not imply contradictory words.

The opposite concept of an antonym is a synonym. Hot and cold are antonyms, while hot and hot are synonyms.

Types of antonyms

Depending on the nature of the connection between words that have opposite meanings, the following types are distinguished:

• linguistic, or dictionary, antonyms - antonyms built on the literal meaning of the word, for example: find - lose;
• additional, or complementary, antonyms - words whose opposite meanings are achieved by negating other words, for example: untruthful (meaning "false");
• contextual, or relational, antonyms are words that acquire antonymic meaning only within the context. The words "teacher" and "student" are not antonyms, but are contrasted in the context of their relationship.

According to the morphological structure, one-root (come - leave) and heterogeneous (deep - shallow) antonyms are distinguished.

Meaning of antonyms

Antonyms are common in folklore as a lexical antithesis, given their semantic binary position (Learning is light, and ignorance is darkness). Antonyms are widely used in oratory, fiction, journalistic literature as a tool to enhance the expressiveness and contrast of speech.

An example of the use of antonyms in literature

They agreed. Wave and stone
Poetry and prose, ice and fire
(A. S. Pushkin; "Eugene Onegin")

Antonyms are used by writers in the title to emphasize the antithetical nature of the structure of the work: “Poetry and Truth” by J. V. Goethe, “Cunning and Love” by F. Schiller, “Shine and Poverty of Courtesans” by O. de Balzac, “Red and Black” by Stendhal, “ Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky, “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Thick and Thin” by A. P. Chekhov, “The Prince and the Pauper” by M. Twain.

The use of antonyms in speech to express differences in qualities, objects, and phenomena that are homogeneous in nature is called antonymy. Antonymy underlies a number of stylistic figures built on the contrast of lexical meanings (oxymoron, chiasm).

The word antonym comes from Greek anti - against and onima, which in translation means a name, a word.

We were lucky to be born in a country where Russian is considered the main language. It is rich in various sounds, words and lexical phrases. One and the same phenomenon can be described in completely different ways, in dozens of different ways, and each description will turn out to be unique, not similar to the previous one. For this, there are synonyms, antonyms and homonyms. They make speech more beautiful, allow you to correctly place accents, and also develop, improving our vocabulary.

What are synonyms and antonyms in Russian, how they differ and what they are - we will find out in today's article. Looking ahead, I will inform you that we will also consider such an interesting thing as homonyms. Go?

What are synonyms

Agree, it would be rather boring to communicate if each item could be called only in one single way. Here you look at the sun, and you cannot say: bright, bright, radiant. You only need to choose one. So it would be very boring, and speech would be poor and poor.

Synonyms are words that have the same meaning but are spelled differently. As you may have guessed, there are a lot of synonyms. For example, a pool and a pond. The meaning is the same, but spelled differently. Another example: house, building, hut, building, building, real estate, dwelling. Continue on your own?

In various cases, words may be synonyms, but they may not be, depending on the context, or they may not be suitable in meaning. For example, cherry blossom can also be called red, but cherry pie is not necessarily red.

Task: come up with synonyms for the words: dog, beast, liquid.

What are antonyms

In contrast to synonyms, there are antonyms - words that are opposite in meaning. They write differently, and the meaning is just the opposite. For example, black - white, good - evil, come - go, start - finish.

It does not mean at all that we use antonyms every day and consciously remember them, rummaging through our memory, but understanding them and being able to quickly pick up several oppositions in our minds is a sign of education and erudition.

Task: pick up antonyms for the words: morning, winter, end.

What are homonyms

The last term for today - homonyms - these are words that are spelled the same, but have completely different meanings. It so happened that there are not a thousand letters in the alphabet of the Russian language, otherwise it would be impossible to remember them all. Therefore, the spellings of words are repeated, under which, depending on the context, different meanings are meant.

For example, the key can be from a door lock, violin in notes, in the form of a reservoir, wrench. All these will be completely different objects, but they will be written in the same way - in a word, the key. The second example: a scythe used to mow grass, as well as a long braid of hair.

Task: what meanings of the following words can you remember: outfit, affection, flying.

In meaning, but words belonging to the same part of speech. They have different spellings and sounds. It is very easy to determine the meaning of one antonym through another, it is enough to give it the form of negation. For example, a direct antonym for the word to speak - not to be silent, sad - not cheerful etc. In this article, we will consider the concept of "antonyms" in more detail and find out their types.

General information

Due to the richness of the Russian language, there are many nuances and subtleties in any part of speech. It is not for nothing that numerous textbooks on linguistics are studied in schools and some higher educational institutions.

1. It is noteworthy that, due to the ambiguity, the antonyms of the same word in different contexts differ. For example: old boar - young boar, old car - new car, old cheese - fresh cheese etc.
2. Not every lexical unit has antonyms. They are not, for example, in words sew, institute, book etc.
3. The main feature is the opposition of words that can mean:

• attributes of the subject ( smart - stupid, evil - kind);
• social and natural phenomena ( talent - mediocrity, heat - cold);
• states and actions ( disassemble - collect, forget - remember).

Types of antonyms

They are different in structure.

• One-root antonyms are words that are opposite in meaning, but have the same root. For example: love - dislike, progress - regression. They are formed by adding prefixes (non-, without / with-, re-, de-, and so on).
• Different-root antonyms are words that are polar in meaning and have different roots. For example: big - small, black - white.

In turn, the first type is also divided into: antonyms-euphemisms (loyally express the opposite, difference, for example: significant - insignificant) and enantiosemes (express opposition with the same word, for example: view(in the sense of seeing) and view(meaning skip).

Another group is also distinguished: contextual antonyms are words that differ in meaning only in a particular case. For example, in the author's performance: she had not eyes- but eyes.

The meaning of antonyms are as follows.

• Opposite: they denote the polarity of actions, phenomena or signs. As a rule, between similar antonyms you can put a word with a neutral meaning: joy- apathy - sad, positive- indifference - negative.
• Vector: they denote multidirectional actions: put on - take off, open - close.
• Contradictory: indicate the polarity of objects, phenomena and signs, each of which excludes the other. It is impossible to put a neutral word between them: right left.

In a sentence, antonyms play a stylistic role and are used to make speech more expressive. Often they are used as an antithesis (opposition, contrast). Example: "Who was nobody, he will become everything." Sometimes antonyms form an oxymoron (connection of the incompatible). Example: "Hot snow", "Living corpse".

Antonyms are widely used not only in the titles of works, but also in proverbs and sayings.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. You often hear arguments about this, but you don't have to be a philologist to understand that learning Russian is a real feat.

Especially given the presence of a large number of words that are comparable in meaning, but often completely different in spelling (). Or, conversely, different in meaning, but identical in spelling (). But there are still words that are the same in sound, but differ in spelling ().

In this regard, it only remains for us to find out what antonyms are, what role they play in the Russian language, and whether we can do without them, in principle.

Looking ahead, I’ll say that without them, the lexical beauty of the Russian language would have suffered significant damage. To understand this, it’s enough to turn to our classics, who often used this technique in their work.

What is an antonym

In short, this is the opposite of synonyms (different words denoting approximately the same thing, such as “cheerful - joyful”, “traveler - traveler”). In the case of an antonym, the definition will sound like this:

these are the words that have opposite meanings(opposed to each other), but necessarily belonging to the same part of speech. For example, "day - night", "bright - dark", "go - stand", "cold - warm".

The word itself is a derivative of the ancient Greek words ἀντί meaning "against" and ὄνομα meaning "name":

It turns out that antonyms are most often two words (lexical oppositions), belonging to the same part of speech, which can be:

Numerals, pronouns and proper names, as well as words related to different parts of speech, do not have antonyms. There are many words in Russian that cannot be contrasted, but in this case it can be found in a figurative sense.

Please note that the figurative meaning of the same word may differ in different contexts.

For example, we can say about an animal of different ages “old” and “young” (wolf, goose, ram), but we cannot characterize a car, machine, sofa in the same way. They can also be old, but there is no such expression as a “young” car (sofa, machine). In this case, another antonym would be better - "new".

And there are a sufficient number of such examples, therefore, to explain in a nutshell what this is will not work (as well as about synonyms, paronyms and homonyms). I'm not talking about foreigners - for them it is a direct path to the "yellow house".

Varieties of antonyms, on what grounds they are divided

Speaking about the varieties of autonomous entities, we can distinguish:

Now let's consolidate the learned material by watching a short video on the topic without missing anything interesting:

Examples of various antonyms

The lexical set of the Russian language is so rich that foreigners do not have enough time to figure out what synonyms, antonyms and homonyms are. Native speakers in this regard are incomparably easier.

There are the following varieties of antonymic words and expressions:

Obviously, without these lexical embellishments, our language would be boring and uninteresting. Without them, how could you describe a person who has the complete opposite of another personality or convey experiences and feelings.

Thus, several concepts can be contrasted at once, as in the example “love good and hate evil”.

Antonyms in Russian proverbs

You can talk a lot about how useful antonyms are, and how difficult it is without them, but it's better to consider examples. In this regard, Russian proverbs and sayings will well illustrate the material.

Everyone, for example, understands the meaning of the proverb, which says that "the sleigh must be prepared in the summer, and the cart in the winter." Antonyms enhance the effect. Each of us knows that “a well-fed hungry one is not a friend”, “the morning is wiser than the evening”, but “in the bins of a bad owner it is either thick or empty.”

Sometimes the opposite is indicated by whole phrases. For example, about a rich person, you can say that "he has money - chickens do not peck", but a poor person has it - "like a cat cried." You can also “keep your eyes open”, or you can “count the crow”, “live with your hump” or “sit on someone else's neck”.

The Russian language is truly rich, and you will not envy those who have to learn it “from scratch”, because how to explain to a foreigner what “seven spans in the forehead” is and how the expression “without a king in the head” differs.

And in conclusion, check how correctly you have learned the material and understood what the antonym is:

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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Synonyms - words belonging to the same part of speech, different in spelling and pronunciation, but similar in lexical name (cheerful - joyful). Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, different in spelling and pronunciation, having directly opposite lexical meanings. (happy - sad). Synonymous nouns: fun - joy, moon - month, doctor - doctor. Nouns-antonyms: minus - plus, evil - good, heat - cold.

Nouns are a group of words that give names to people, objects, abstract concepts, natural phenomena, etc. Nouns answer the questions who? or what? Among nouns, various subgroups are distinguished according to the meaning of words. Among such subgroups are synonyms and antonyms.

What are synonyms and antonyms

Synonyms are words that have very similar meanings. The words sound and are spelled differently and have nothing in common. For example, trouble and sadness, a doctor and a doctor. These words have exactly the same meaning and can be used in the same situations. Such synonyms are called absolute.

In addition to absolute, there are partial synonyms. For example, hot and hot. When describing the weather, we can say both "hot weather" and "hot weather", but with the word "tea" we can only put "hot tea". "Hot" in this case will sound silly.

Words and phrases can also be synonyms. For example, morning is the beginning of the day. In this case, one word "morning" can be replaced by two words without loss of meaning.

Synonyms are used when it is necessary to avoid the constant use of the same words in the text.

Antonyms are words with opposite meanings. Unlike synonyms, antonyms can have completely different spellings, but they can also be the same root words. The first are the words "black" and "white". Examples of "true" and "false" can be cited for the second.

It is also worth mentioning that synonyms form a synonymous series, in which there can be an unlimited number of words. For example, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense ... Antonyms form only pairs: heavy - light, good - evil, strong - weak.

Examples of synonyms and antonyms

To better understand the difference between synonyms and antonyms, consider a few examples:

• day - night - the words could be considered synonyms, because they denote part of the day, but these are antonyms, since day is the light part, night is the dark part;
• lake - pond - synonyms. There is a difference between a lake and a pond, but these reservoirs are very similar and the words are synonymous;
• space - Universe - synonyms;
• noise - silence - antonyms.