Secrets of Antonyms & Synonyms

Synonyms & Antonyms are an integral part of grammar. Primarily, they enhance the vocabulary. They also encourage replacing the old words with new one & thus bring newness in your speech. Exploring new words is very motivating & interesting. Besides, using different synonyms & antonyms attracts the readers and listeners. Hence the speaker can leave an excellent and everlasting impression. A brief about synonyms and antonyms is given below.

Synonyms are defined as the words which have identical meanings. All the words can have synonyms. Even all the parts of speech including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions can have a synonym. However, The meanings may or may not be exact.

For example the synonym of ‘big’ is ‘large’ & of ‘small’ is ‘little’. The synonyms for the word student are pupil, scholar, undergraduate, learner etc. The word student means a person studying in a school or a college while pupil means a person or child studying in school or privately with a teacher. Their usage will be clearer with the following examples.

• I am an engineering student.
• He is a pupil of famous singer Lata Mangeshkar.

Similarly the word scholar means someone who has expertise in some field. For Example: Raman is a maths scholar. This means that Raman in expert in Maths. Thus the reader or speaker should ensure that the synonyms are used efficiently.

Likewise, using the antonyms effectively brings vividness in speaking & writing and also makes them vibrant. The Antonyms are the words opposite to another word. They are basically used to show contrast. The distinction can be for time such as day- night or morning – evening, for colours like light – dark, dull – bright, for comparison like big – small, tall- short, for describing personality ugly- beautiful, elegant- inelegant etc.

The antonyms can be further categorized in three categories: -

• Graded Antonyms
• Relational Antonyms
• Complimentary Antonyms

A brief description of these subtypes along with their examples is given below.

1. Graded Antonyms: As the name suggests, the pair of antonyms fall in this category differ in their degree. They express relationship along a scale of degree.

   For Example:

• Good - Bad
• Happy - Sad
• Beautiful - Ugly
• Smart - Stupid
• Big - Little

2. Relational Antonyms:

The pair of antonyms which have a relationship between them fall in this category. In this pair a words couldn’t exist without the other.

   Examples:

• Back - Front
• Husband - Wife
• Black - White
• Open - Close
• Sell- Buy

3. Complimentary Antonyms: The pair of antonyms which have no degree of meaning fall in this category. They are complementary to each other.

   Examples:

• Dead - Alive
• Male - Female
• On - Off
• Present - Absent
• Pass - Fail
• Hit - Miss

While choosing an antonym, one should keep the context of the word in his/ her mind and then choose the best word which is opposite in its meaning. The appropriate use of antonyms & synonyms makes the text & speech striking. The usage of new words spices up the conversation. But this can only happen when these are used effectively & at the right place.

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