Opposition

[rochvelleth]

I was talking, by chance, about opposites today. Sort of about antonyms, but I didn't want to limit it to an exclusively linguistic terminology - I'm interested in why concepts might be opposite as much as particular words (not for any good reason, I should point out - idle curiosity at best). So I'd welcome any comments on what opposites are, and

Comments

[cartesiandaemon]

I think it depends on context. In one context (eg. walking through a door), "open" and "not open" might be opposites. In another (eg. a draft) "closed" and "not closed" might be opposites. Or in maths, this actually happens. -1 denotes opposite as much as anything else. 2-1 means 1/2 normally. But sometimes, working in an addition field, it would mean -2

[beckyc]

It depends on the context. You've given examples from several different contexts and the ticky boxes don't apply to them all. Red and green are opposite on a colour wheel, but don't involve negation. Black and white are opposite only in some senses of the word. Typically, I think of an opposite as being a bistate situation where the two states cover every option without any overlap. But in some situations, it merely means two things are as different as is possible to be under a set of circumstances.

[edith_the_hutt]

See, how I would have said Black and White are opposite in terms of light, not colour.