What are antonyms and examples of their enrichment of the Russian language. What are antonyms? The most important thing about antonyms

Antonyms, words opposite in meaning, have a special and very important place in the Russian language. Antonymy reflects the essential side of systemic connections in the vocabulary of the language. Modern science of language considers and studies synonymy and antonymy, in the form of extreme, limiting cases of opposition and interchangeability of words in terms of their content. Moreover, in a synonymic sense, similarity is characteristic, in an antonymic sense, a semantic difference. The presence of antonyms in the Russian language is determined by the nature of the perception of reality with all its contradictory complexity, in the struggle and unity of opposites. That is why the contrasting words themselves, and the concepts by which they are denoted, are both opposed and also closely related.

Antonyms, translated from Greek, mean: anti - “against” and onym “name”, that is, these are words that are different in their sound and have the opposite meaning. For example: a lie - the truth, is silent - speaks, laughs - cries, etc. As a rule, antonyms form pairs and refer to the same part of speech. Antonymy in Russian seems to be already synonymy. So, only those words that correlate according to some feature (these are qualitative, quantitative, temporal or spatial features) can enter into antonymic relations. They belong to the same category as a mutually exclusive concept: ugly - beautiful, little - a lot, evening - morning, warm - cold, etc.

Most of the antonyms characterize certain definitions (bad - good, stupid - smart, alien - native, rare - dense). There are antonyms indicating temporal and spatial relationships (small - large, cramped - spacious, late - early). There are antonymic pairs that have a quantitative value (a few - many, numerous - the only one). There are those that indicate the opposite of the names of different states, or actions (laugh - cry, grieve - rejoice), but they are much less than the others.Due to the development of antonymic relations, our perception of reality with its contradictory complexity and interdependence is reflected. This explains both the opposition of contrasting words and concepts, and their connection with each other.For example, the word evil immediately evokes the word good in the mind, close reminds of the distant, etc. Antonyms, as a rule, can be extreme points in the lexical paradigm. Between them there are words that reflect the indicated signs, both increasing and decreasing, for example: useful - useless - harmless - harmful. Such opposition assumes a possible degree of strengthening or reduction of signs, qualities or actions. Semantic gradation (gradation) is peculiar only to those antonyms whose semantic structure contains an indication of some degree of quality: old - young, small - large, large - small. Other antonymic pairs do not have this sign of gradation: bottom - top, night - day, death - life, woman - man. Antonyms with signs in ordinary speech are interchangeable and thereby give the statement a polite form; therefore it is better to say an elderly person than an old one, for example. Those words that are used to eliminate the rudeness and harshness of the phrase are called euphemisms.

Different in sound and spelling, having directly opposite lexical meanings, for example: “truth” - “false”, “kind” - “evil”, “speak” - “keep silent”.

The lexical units of the vocabulary of a language turn out to be closely related not only on the basis of their associative connection by similarity or contiguity as lexico-semantic variants of a polysemantic word. Most of the words of the language do not contain a feature capable of opposition, therefore, antonymic relations are impossible for them, however, in a figurative sense, they can acquire an antonym. Thus, in contextual antonymy, antonymic relations of words with a direct meaning are possible, and then these pairs of words carry an emphatic load and perform a special stylistic function.

Antonyms are possible for such words, the meanings of which contain opposite qualitative shades, but the meanings are always based on a common feature (weight, height, feeling, time of day, etc.). Also, only words belonging to the same grammatical or stylistic category can be opposed. Consequently, words belonging to different parts of speech or lexical levels cannot become linguistic antonyms.

There are no proper names, pronouns, numeral antonyms.

Typology of antonymic relations

Antonyms according to the type of concepts expressed:

contrastive correlates - such opposites that mutually complement each other to the whole, without transitional links; they are in relation to the privative opposition. Examples: bad - good, false - true, alive - dead.
counter correlates - antonyms expressing polar opposites within one essence in the presence of transitional links - internal gradation; they are in relation to the gradual opposition. Examples: black (- gray -) white, old (- elderly - middle-aged -) young, large (- medium -) small.
vector correlates are antonyms expressing different directions of actions, signs, social phenomena, etc. Examples: enter - exit, descend - rise, ignite - extinguish, revolution - counter-revolution.
Converses are words that describe the same situation from the point of view of different participants. Examples: buy - sell, husband - wife, teach - learn, lose - win, lose - find, young - old.
enantiosemy - the presence of opposite meanings in the structure of the word. Examples: to lend money to someone - to borrow money from someone, to surround with tea - to treat and not to treat.
pragmatic - words that are regularly opposed in the practice of their use, in contexts (pragmatics - "action"). Examples: soul - body, mind - heart, earth - sky.

By structure, antonyms are:

heterogeneous (forward - backward);
single root - are formed with the help of prefixes that are opposite in meaning: enter - exit, or with the help of a prefix added to the original word (monopoly - antimonopoly).

From the point of view of language and speech, antonyms are divided into:

linguistic (usual) - antonyms that exist in the language system (rich - poor);
contextual (contextual, speech, occasional) - antonyms that occur in a certain context (to check for the presence of this type, you need to reduce them to a language pair) - (golden - copper half, that is, expensive - cheap). They often appear in proverbs.

From the point of view of action, antonyms are:

proportionate - action and reaction: get up - go to bed, get rich - get poorer;
disproportionate - action and lack of action (in the broad sense): ignite - extinguish, think - think over.

Antonyms in poetry

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Notes

Synonyms. Antonyms.

Literature

Lvov M. R. Dictionary of antonyms of the Russian language: More than 2000 antonyms. steam / Ed. L. A. Novikova. - 4th ed., stereotype. - M.: Rus. yaz., 1988. - 384 p. (mistaken.)

An excerpt characterizing Antonyms

“Well, well…” he said.
“I know that she loves ... she will love you,” Princess Mary corrected herself.
Before she had time to say these words, Pierre jumped up and, with a frightened face, grabbed Princess Mary by the hand.
- Why do you think? Do you think that I can hope? You think?!
“Yes, I think so,” said Princess Mary, smiling. - Write to your parents. And entrust me. I'll tell her when I can. I wish it. And my heart feels that it will be.
- No, it can't be! How happy I am! But it can't be... How happy I am! No, it can not be! - said Pierre, kissing the hands of Princess Mary.
- You go to St. Petersburg; this is better. I'll write to you, she said.
- To Petersburg? Drive? Okay, yes, let's go. But tomorrow I can come to you?
The next day, Pierre came to say goodbye. Natasha was less lively than in the old days; but on this day, sometimes looking into her eyes, Pierre felt that he was disappearing, that neither he nor she was anymore, but there was one feeling of happiness. “Really? No, it can’t be,” he said to himself at her every look, gesture, word that filled his soul with joy.
When, bidding her farewell, he took her thin, thin hand, he involuntarily held it a little longer in his.
“Is it possible that this hand, this face, these eyes, all this treasure of female charm, alien to me, will this all be forever mine, familiar, the same as I am for myself? No, It is Immpossible!.."
“Farewell, Count,” she said to him loudly. “I will be waiting for you very much,” she added in a whisper.
And these simple words, the look and facial expression that accompanied them, for two months, were the subject of Pierre's inexhaustible memories, explanations and happy dreams. “I will be waiting for you very much ... Yes, yes, as she said? Yes, I will be waiting for you. Ah, how happy I am! What is it, how happy I am!” Pierre said to himself.

In Pierre's soul now nothing similar happened to what happened in her in similar circumstances during his courtship with Helen.
He did not repeat, as then, with painful shame, the words he had spoken, he did not say to himself: “Ah, why didn’t I say this, and why, why did I say “je vous aime” then?” [I love you] Now, on the contrary, he repeated every word of hers, his own, in his imagination with all the details of her face, smile, and did not want to subtract or add anything: he only wanted to repeat. There was no doubt now whether what he had done was good or bad, there was no shadow now. Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind. Is it all in a dream? Was Princess Mary wrong? Am I too proud and arrogant? I believe; and suddenly, as it should happen, Princess Marya will tell her, and she will smile and answer: “How strange! He was right, wrong. Doesn't he know that he is a man, just a man, and I? .. I am completely different, higher.
Only this doubt often came to Pierre. He didn't make any plans either. It seemed to him so incredibly impending happiness that as soon as this happened, nothing could be further. Everything ended.
Joyful, unexpected madness, for which Pierre considered himself incapable, took possession of him. The whole meaning of life, not for him alone, but for the whole world, seemed to him to consist only in his love and in the possibility of her love for him. Sometimes all people seemed to him busy with only one thing - his future happiness. It sometimes seemed to him that they all rejoiced in the same way as he himself, and only tried to hide this joy, pretending to be occupied with other interests. In every word and movement he saw hints of his happiness. He often surprised people who met him with his significant, expressing secret consent, happy looks and smiles. But when he realized that people might not know about his happiness, he felt sorry for them with all his heart and felt a desire to somehow explain to them that everything they were doing was complete nonsense and trifles not worthy of attention.
When he was offered to serve, or when some general, state affairs and war were discussed, assuming that the happiness of all people depended on such or such an outcome of such and such an event, he listened with a meek, condoling smile and surprised the people who spoke to him with his strange remarks. But both those people who seemed to Pierre to understand the real meaning of life, that is, his feeling, and those unfortunate people who obviously did not understand this - all people in this period of time seemed to him in such a bright light of the feeling shining in him that without the slightest effort, he immediately, meeting with any person, saw in him everything that was good and worthy of love.

(from Greek anti - against, ónyma - name) - these are words with the opposite meaning when used in pairs. Those words enter into antonymic relations, which reveal from opposite sides correlative concepts associated with one circle of objects, phenomena. Words form antonymic pairs based on their lexical meaning. One and the same word, if it is ambiguous, can have several antonyms.

occur within all parts of speech, but the words of an antonymic pair must belong to the same part of speech.

Do not enter into antonymic relations:

- nouns with a specific meaning (house, book, school), proper names;

- numerals, most pronouns;

- words denoting gender (man and woman, son and daughter);

- words with different stylistic coloring;

- words with magnifying or diminutive accents (hand - hands, house - house).

By their structure, antonyms are not homogeneous. Among them there are:

- one-root antonyms: happiness - misfortune, open - close;

- heterogeneous antonyms: black - white, good - bad.

The phenomenon of antonymy is closely related to the polysemy of the word. Each of the meanings of the word can have its own antonyms. Yes, the word fresh in different meanings will have different antonymic pairs: fresh wind - sultry wind, fresh bread - stale bread, fresh shirt - dirty shirt.

Antonymic relations can also arise between different meanings of the same word. For example, to look through means “to get acquainted with something, to check, quickly examining, looking through, reading” and “to skip, not notice, miss”. The combination of opposite meanings in one word is called enantiosemy.

Depending on the distinctive features that words with the opposite meaning have, two types of antonyms can be distinguished general language(or simply language) and contextual speech(author's or individual).

Common language antonyms are regularly reproduced in speech and fixed in the vocabulary (day - night, poor - rich).

Contextual speech antonyms- these are words that enter into antonymous relations only in a certain context: Sing better with a goldfinch than with a nightingale.

The use of antonyms makes speech more vivid and expressive. Antonyms are used in colloquial and artistic speech, in many proverbs and sayings, in the titles of many literary works.

One of the stylistic figures is built on a sharp opposition of antonyms - antithesis(opposition) - a characteristic by comparing two opposite phenomena or signs: Long live the sun, let the darkness hide! (A.S. Pushkin). Writers often build titles of works using this technique: “War and Peace” (L.N. Tolstoy), “Fathers and Sons” (I.S. Turgenev), “Thick and Thin” (A.P. Chekhov), etc. .

Another stylistic device, which is based on the comparison of antonymic meanings, is oxymoron or oxymoron(gr. oxymoron - lit. witty-stupid) - a figure of speech in which logically incompatible concepts are connected: a living corpse, dead souls, ringing silence.

Dictionaries of antonyms will help you choose an antonym for a word.Dictionaries of antonyms- linguistic reference dictionaries that describe antonyms. For example, in dictionary L.A. Vvedenskaya the interpretation of more than 1000 antonymic pairs is given (their synonymous correspondences are also taken into account), the contexts of use are given. BUT in the dictionary of N.P. Kolesnikova antonyms and paronyms are fixed. The book contains approximately 3,000 paronyms and more than 1,300 pairs of antonyms. There are no illustrations of the use of antonyms in the dictionary.

In addition to antonym dictionaries of a general type, there are also private dictionaries that fix polar relationships in some narrow areas of the vocabulary. This includes, for example, dictionaries of antonyms-phraseological units, dictionaries of antonyms-dialectisms, etc.

Let's take a look at the most common examples of antonyms: good evil; good bad; friend - enemy; day Night; heat - cold; peace - war, quarrel; true False; success - failure; benefit - harm; rich - poor; difficult - easy; generous - stingy; thick - thin; hard - soft; brave - cowardly; White black; fast - slow; high Low; bitter - sweet; hot Cold; wet - dry; full - hungry; new - old; big small; laugh - cry; speak - be silent; love - hate.

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Antonyms (gr. anti- against + onyma- name) - these are words that are different in sound, having directly opposite meanings: truth - lie, good - evil, speak - be silent. Antonyms, as a rule, refer to one part of speech and form pairs.

Modern lexicology considers synonymy and antonymy as extreme, limiting cases, on the one hand, of interchangeability, on the other hand, of opposition of words in content. At the same time, synonymous relations are characterized by semantic similarity, while antonymic relations are characterized by semantic difference.

Antonymy in the language is presented `narrower than synonymy: only words that are correlative on any basis - qualitative, quantitative, temporal, spatial and belonging to the same category of objective reality as mutually exclusive concepts enter into antonymic relations: beautiful - ugly, many - few, morning - evening, remove - bring closer. Words of other meanings usually do not have antonyms; compare: house, thinking, writing, twenty, Kyiv, Caucasus. Most antonyms characterize qualities ( good - bad, smart - stupid, native - alien, thick - rare and under.); there are quite a few that point to spatial and temporal relationships ( large - small, spacious - cramped, high - low, wide - narrow; early - late, day - night); fewer antonymic pairs with quantitative meaning ( many - few; single - numerous). There are opposite names of actions, states ( cry - laugh, rejoice - grieve), but these are few.

The development of antonymic relations in vocabulary reflects our perception of reality in all its contradictory complexity and interdependence. Therefore, contrasting words, as well as the concepts they denote, are not only opposed to each other, but are also closely related. Word kind, for example, evokes in our minds the word evil, distant reminiscent of close, accelerate- about slow down.

Antonyms "are at the extreme points of the lexical paradigm", but between them in the language there may be words that reflect the indicated feature to a different extent, i.e., its decrease or increase. For example: rich- prosperous - poor - poor - beggar; harmful- harmless - useless - useful . Such opposition implies a possible degree of strengthening of a sign, quality, action, or gradation (lat. gradient- gradual increase). Semantic gradation (gradation), thus, is characteristic only of those antonyms whose semantic structure contains an indication of the degree of quality: young - old, big - small, small - large and under. Other antonymic pairs are devoid of the sign of gradualness: up - down, day - night, life - death, man - woman.

Antonyms that have a sign of gradualness can be interchanged in speech to give the statement a polite form; yes, it's better to say thin, how skinny; elderly, how old. Words used to eliminate the harshness or rudeness of a phrase are called euphemisms (gr. eu- good + phemi- I say). On this basis, sometimes they talk about antonyms-euphemisms, which express the meaning of the opposite in a softened form.

In the lexical system of the language, antonyms-conversives can also be distinguished (lat. conversion- change). These are words expressing the relationship of opposites in the original (direct) and modified (reverse) statements: Alexander gave book to Dmitry.- Dmitry took Alexander's book Professor accepts credit for the trainee.- Trainee surrenders credit to the professor.

There is also intra-word antonymy in the language - the antonymy of the meanings of polysemantic words, or enantiosemy (gr. enantios- opposite + sema - sign). This phenomenon is observed in polysemantic words that develop mutually exclusive meanings. For example, the verb depart can mean "to return to normal, feel better", but it can also mean "to die, say goodbye to life." Enantiosemy becomes the reason for the ambiguity of such statements, for example: Editor viewed these lines; I listened to divertissement; Speaker misspoke and under.

By structure, antonyms are divided into heterogeneous (day - night) and single-root ( come - go, revolution - counter-revolution). The former constitute a group of proper lexical antonyms, the latter - lexico-grammatical. In single-root antonyms, the opposite of meaning is caused by various prefixes, which are also capable of entering into antonymic relations; compare: in lie down - you lay down, at put - from put, behind cover - from cover. Therefore, the opposition of such words is due to word formation. However, it should be borne in mind that adding prefixes to quality adjectives, adverbs not without- most often gives them the meaning of only a weakened opposite ( young - not young), so that the contrast of their meaning in comparison with non-prefixed antonyms turns out to be "muffled" ( middle-aged It doesn't mean "old" yet. Therefore, not all prefix formations can be attributed to antonyms in the strict sense of this term, but only those that are extreme members of the antonymic paradigm: successful - unsuccessful, strong - powerless.

Antonyms, as already mentioned, usually form a pair correlation in the language. However, this does not mean that a particular word can have one antonym. Antonymic relations make it possible to express the opposition of concepts in an "open", polynomial series, cf .: concrete - abstract, abstract; cheerful - sad, sad, dull, boring.

In addition, each member of an antonymic pair or antonymic series can have its own synonyms that do not intersect in antonymy. Then a certain system is formed in which synonymous units are located vertically, and antonymic units are located horizontally. For example:

smart - stupid to be sad - to rejoice reasonable - stupid to be sad - to have fun wise - brainless to yearn - to exult

Such a correlation of synonymous and antonymic relations reflects the systemic connections of words in the vocabulary. The interrelation of ambiguity and antonymy of lexical units also points to the consistency.

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 it will not work to explain in a nutshell what this is (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 exact 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: