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Added 9 October 2026

antonym

/ˈæn.təˌnɪm/ noun

In Latin: antonymum Wiktionary

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about antonym at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

A word which has the opposite (averted or inverted) meaning of another word.
“Rich” is an antonym of “poor”; “full” is an antonym of “empty”.
A word that describes one end of a scale, while its opposite describes the other end, such as large versus small; a gradable antonym.

Origin

From French antonyme (1840s and 1850s), which was modeled on earlier synonyme and influenced by the etymons of Ancient Greek ἀντωνυμία (antōnumía, “pronoun”); credit for popularization of the French loanword's naturalization into English is given principally to Charles John Smith and his 1867 book Synonyms and Antonyms: Or, Kindred Words and Their Opposites. Collected and Contrasted. By surface analysis, ant- + -onym.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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