50 Fun Facts About Antonyms and Opposites

Which continent's name comes from the Greek for 'opposite the Bear', a northern constellation?

Antarctica is named from 'antarktikos', opposite the Arctic, the land beneath the Great Bear. A southern continent was imagined in antiquity, long before the first sighting, probably in 1820.

Which Latin word for 'left', the opposite of 'dexter', now describes anything menacing in English?

Sinister was plain Latin for the left-hand side. Roman augurs took up a Greek habit of reading omens seen on the left as unlucky, and the word slid from a direction to a threat.

Which word for a lowest point, the opposite of 'zenith', comes from the Arabic for 'opposite'?

Nadir comes from the Arabic 'nazir as-samt', the opposite direction. Astronomers used it for the point of the sky directly beneath an observer before it came to mean any low point.

Which word for an imagined nightmare society was built as the opposite of Thomas More's 'utopia'?

Dystopia swaps the start of 'utopia' for the Greek 'dys-', meaning bad. John Stuart Mill called a government 'dys-topians' in 1868, long before the noun took hold in the 1950s.

Which country sits opposite Spain on the globe, so that the two are each other's antipodes?

New Zealand's North Island lies almost exactly opposite Spain. Such land-to-land matches are rare: most places, Australia included, have open ocean on the far side of the world.

Words that are their own opposites, like 'dust', are named after which two-faced Roman god?

Janus, the god of doorways and beginnings, is usually shown with two faces, so 'Janus words' look both ways. To dust can mean removing fine particles or sprinkling them on a cake.

Which word, the opposite of 'analogue' in electronics, comes from the Latin for 'finger or toe'?

Digital goes back to 'digitus', because people counted the numbers below ten on their fingers. Computers that run on digits took the word in the 1940s, set against analogue machines.

In Seinfeld's 'The Opposite', which character lands a New York Yankees job by defying every instinct?

George decides that if every instinct he has is wrong, the reverse must be right. It wins him a date and then the job, after he tells off the Yankees' owner to his face.

Which opposite of 'entrance' began as a Latin stage direction meaning 'he or she goes out'?

Exit entered English play scripts as a Latin instruction telling an actor to leave. Its use for a door out of a building is far younger, dating from the 1780s.

Which muscle works as the opposite of the biceps, straightening the elbow when it contracts?

Triceps is Latin for 'three-headed', after the muscle's three parts. Anatomists call it the antagonist of the biceps, because each muscle undoes the other's movement.

Which side of a right-angled triangle lies opposite the right angle and is always the longest?

Hypotenuse comes from the Greek for 'stretching under', because it stretches beneath the right angle. The two shorter sides are known as the legs, or catheti.

Which of Isaac Newton's laws of motion says every action is met by an equal and opposite reaction?

Third of the laws Newton published in 1687, it says forces come in pairs of equal size. The two forces act on different bodies, a point that short versions of the law often blur.

Which singer dances with a cartoon cat called MC Skat Kat in the video for 'Opposites Attract'?

Paula Abdul made the video as a tribute to Gene Kelly, whose film Anchors Aweigh had blended live dancing with animation. It won the Grammy for best music video in 1991.

On the traditional painter's colour wheel, which colour sits directly opposite red as its complement?

Green faces red on the red-yellow-blue wheel that artists have used since the 18th century. Screens and printers mix colour differently, and in their models red's partner is cyan.

Which figure of speech pairing contradictory words has a Greek name meaning 'pointedly foolish'?

Oxymoron joins the Greek 'oxys', sharp, and 'moros', stupid, so the term is an example of itself. 'Moros' is also where English found the word moron.

Which word, the opposite of 'optimist', is built on the Latin word for 'worst'?

Pessimist rests on the Latin 'pessimus', in a word modelled on 'optimism'. The label was later attached to Schopenhauer's doctrine that this is the worst possible world.

Which word for an outgoing person did Carl Jung popularise as the opposite of 'introvert'?

Extrovert joins the Latin for 'outside' and 'to turn'. It was first spelled 'extravert'; the 'o' crept in after 1918, in imitation of its opposite number.

Which word, the opposite of 'professional', comes through French from the Latin for 'lover'?

Amateur first meant a 'lover' of some art who did not practise it. In athletics the sneer once ran the other way, falling on the paid professional instead.

The word 'enemy' comes from Latin 'inimicus', made by putting 'not' before the word for what?

Friend is 'amicus' in Latin, and 'inimicus' bolts 'in-', meaning not, onto it: literally an 'unfriend'. Spanish 'enemigo' and Italian 'nemico' descend from the same word.

Which word, the opposite of 'guilty', comes from the Latin for 'not harming'?

Innocent joins 'in-', not, and 'nocere', to harm, a relative of the word 'noxious'. Its courtroom sense, cleared of a particular charge, dates from the late 14th century.

Which word describes trees that shed their leaves each autumn, the botanical opposite of 'evergreen'?

Deciduous means 'falling off at maturity', and botanists apply it to petals and ripe fruit as well as leaves. In hot, arid regions such trees drop their foliage in the dry season instead.

Which opposite of 'nocturnal', from the Latin 'dies', describes animals that are active by day?

Diurnal creatures keep daylight hours, while those busiest at twilight are called crepuscular. Flowers earn the label too: sunflowers open by day to attract bees.

Which word, the opposite of 'waxing', describes the Moon as its lit face shrinks after a full moon?

Waning comes from the Old English 'wanian', to become smaller gradually. Since the Middle Ages English has used it above all for the monthly lessening of the visible Moon.

Which word for a ship's left side, the opposite of 'starboard', replaced the similar-sounding 'larboard'?

Port had been an alternative name for the docking side since the 1500s. The Royal Navy made it the official term in 1844 and the United States Navy followed two years later.

Which closing section of a book, the opposite of a prologue, has a Greek name meaning 'conclusion'?

Epilogue rounds off a story from inside its own world. When the author steps in and speaks directly to the reader, the piece is more properly called an afterword.

Which opposite of 'inflation' describes prices falling across an economy, as in the Great Depression?

Deflation sets in when the inflation rate drops below zero. It is not the same as disinflation, a mere slowdown in price rises that leaves the rate positive.

Which party to a lawsuit, the opposite of the defendant, is known as the 'claimant' in English courts?

Plaintiff started out as the same word as 'plaintive', from the Old French for complaining. The legal sense simply kept the older '-iff' spelling.

In music, which Italian term for gradually getting quieter is the opposite of 'crescendo'?

Diminuendo translates as 'diminishing' and is shortened to 'dim.' on a score. Composers can also draw it as a hairpin, a long wedge that closes toward the right.

Which opposite of 'verbose' takes its name from the region around ancient Sparta?

Laconic comes from Laconia, the Spartans' homeland. When Philip of Macedon warned what he would do if he invaded, they are said to have sent back a single word: 'If.'

Which word for a hater of humankind, the philanthropist's opposite, titles a 1666 Molière comedy?

Misanthrope joins the Greek 'misein', to hate, and 'anthropos', man. Molière's verse play of that name pokes fun at the hypocrisies of French aristocratic society.

Which word for selfless concern for others did Auguste Comte popularise as the opposite of 'egoism'?

Altruism was built on the French 'autrui', meaning of or to others, from the Latin 'alter', other. English borrowed it in 1853, about two decades after Comte launched it in French.

Which verb means both 'to split' and 'to cling', because two Old English verbs grew into one spelling?

Cleave the splitter came from Old English 'cleofan', cleave the clinger from 'clifian'. The splitting verb's old past participle survives in compounds such as 'cloven-hoofed'.

Which word names the Moon's closest point to Earth in its orbit, the opposite of the apogee?

Perigee ends in '-gee', the suffix astronomers use for orbits around Earth. For orbits around the Sun the suffix is '-helion', which makes the nearest point there the perihelion.

Which particle is the antimatter opposite of the electron, first identified in a cloud chamber in 1932?

Positron tracks were first identified by Carl Anderson, a year after Paul Dirac predicted an 'anti-electron'. It has the same mass as an electron but carries the reverse charge.

Which narrow strip of land linking two larger landmasses is the geographic opposite of a strait?

Isthmus comes from the Greek for 'neck'. A strait is its mirror image: a narrow stretch of sea between two landmasses that links two larger bodies of water.

In genetics, which word, the opposite of 'dominant', describes a gene variant whose effect is masked?

Recessive variants are overridden whenever a dominant partner is present. In the classic pea example, the wrinkled-seed variant shows only in plants that carry two copies of it.

Which nuclear process, the opposite of fission, joins light atomic nuclei and powers the stars?

Fusion works best with the lightest nuclei, such as deuterium and tritium. Its opposite is most energetic at the other end of the scale, with very heavy nuclei.

Which word for 'secret' is the opposite of 'overt', which itself comes from the Old French for 'open'?

Covert is literally 'covered' in Old French, the past participle of 'covrir'. Its rival comes from 'ovrir', to open, and at first described unfastened clothes and open books.

Which virtue is the traditional opposite of pride, one of the seven deadly sins?

Humility confronts pride in the 'Psychomachia', a 5th-century poem by Prudentius. It was the first work to stage Christian morality as a battle between personified virtues and vices.

Which word is the opposite of 'trivial', which comes from the Latin for a place where three roads meet?

Important is the reverse of what 'trivialis' meant: commonplace, like the talk at a public crossroads. 'Trivia' for trifling facts is younger, spread by a popular book of that title.

Which word for 'anticlockwise', once common in Lowland Scots, is the opposite of 'sunwise'?

Widdershins probably comes from a Middle Low German word meaning 'against the way'. Circling a church that way, against the Sun's apparent course, was long thought unlucky in British folklore.

Which word names the summer dormancy of some land snails, the hot-weather opposite of hibernation?

Aestivation comes from 'aestas', the Latin for summer. Snails that do it seal the opening of their shell with a membrane of dried mucus to stop water escaping.

Which word names the 'heads' side of a coin, the opposite of the reverse?

Obverse means the front face, nicknamed heads because it so often shows the head of a prominent person. Flags, medals and banknotes have one as well.

Which hormone from the pancreas has the opposite effect to insulin, raising blood sugar when it falls?

Glucagon is made by the alpha cells of the pancreas, which release it when glucose in the blood runs low. Doctors also use it as a medication.

Which word did Isaac Newton coin for a force directed toward the centre, the opposite of 'centrifugal'?

Centripetal joins the Latin 'centrum' and 'petere', to seek. Its partner is built on 'fugere', to flee: one force seeks the middle, the other flies from it.

Which English humorist used 'gruntled' as a playful opposite of 'disgruntled' in a 1938 novel?

Wodehouse gave the word to his narrator in The Code of the Woosters. The joke is that the old verb 'gruntle' meant to grumble, and the 'dis-' in front probably just meant 'very'.

Linguists give which name to opposites such as 'hot' and 'cold' that lie on a continuous spectrum?

Gradable antonyms leave room for in-betweens such as warm and cool. Relational pairs, like teacher and pupil, are different: each word only makes sense in terms of the other.

Which anatomical term for an animal's belly side is the opposite of 'dorsal', from the Latin for 'back'?

Ventral comes from 'venter', the Latin for belly. A fish shows the pair neatly: its dorsal fin stands on the upper surface and its ventral fins sit underneath.

In chemistry, which process, the opposite of oxidation, means that a substance gains electrons?

Reduction first described a metal ore losing weight as it was heated into metal. Antoine Lavoisier showed the loss was oxygen escaping; only later was it tied to gaining electrons.

Which figure of speech affirms something by denying its opposite, as when 'not bad' means 'good'?

Litotes comes from the Greek for 'plainness', and it leans on tone of voice: the same 'not bad' can signal anything from mediocre to excellent.