28-11-2017

UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF THE COAST

Central Africa’s Institute of Computer Engineering
T. I. C. Department
First year TICA

ENGLISH
PRESENTATION
TOPIC : ANTONYMS AND
SYNONYMS

Members of the group:

 KOUEMO Grace
 EYOUM Danielle
 DJEOJI Martial
 DAIJE Lethicia
 YANOU Jackson
 WAYEM Steve

Work supervised by Mrs BERINYUY

Academic year 2017-2018
Part I: ANTONYMS
An antonym is a word that is opposite in context of another word
although similar in other respects. The roots of the word antonym are anti and
onym. Here, “anti” means opposite or against and “onym” refers name.
Antonym are most likely verbs, adjectives and adverbs, with few nouns suitable
as true ones. Most words can have more than one antonym. Antonym is the
relation that exists between words which are opposite. Nowadays life is full of
antonyms, from the “stop” and “go” of a road traffic signal to side-by-side
restroom doors labelled “him” and “her”.
Antonyms are pairs of words with almost opposite meanings. Considering short
and tall which are opposite in connotation however both fall under the invariable
parts of speech like adjectives and would take the same place in a sentence.
Some words can be changed into antonyms merely by adding the prefixes in,
dis, non, ir, un etc.
Consider the sentences below:
● It was a cold day
● It was a hot day
Hot is the antonym of cold because they have opposite meanings.

Categories of Antonyms
A word may at times have one or more than one antonym where each word is
the opposite of the other. There are three classifications of antonyms identified
by relationship between the inimical meanings such as:
Graded antonyms – Where two words have descriptions that fall on a constant
spectrum of the meaning. In short it deals with levels of the meaning of the
words, like if something is not “good”, it may still not be “bad”. There is a
measure involved with some words, and in addition to good and bad there can
be average, excellent, fair, poor, satisfactory or terrible.
Examples:
Happy-Sad
Fast-slow etc.
Complementary antonyms – Where the meanings limit to lie on a continuous
range besides the words have no other verbal relationship, and no middle
ground. There are only two possibilities, either one or the other.

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Example:
Dead-alive
Day-night etc.
Relational antonyms – are considered as a subcategory of complementary
antonyms. With relational antonyms there has to be a relationship, where the
two meanings are opposite only within the context of their relationship, where
both must exist. There is no verbal opposite of master, but master and servant
are opposite within the context of their relationship.
Example:
Doctor-patient
Lost-found etc.

Adding a Prefix
Sometimes, an antonym can be easily made by adding a prefix to a word. Look
at the pairs we can obtain:
By adding the prefix “non”
● Conformist and non-conformist
● Violence and non-violence
By adding the prefix “un”
● Able and unable
● Forgettable and unforgettable
By adding the prefix “in”
● Decent and indecent
● Tolerant and intolerant

The importance of Antonyms:

To understand a word in a better manner, students must know its antonyms.
Sometimes, a dictionary definition is not enough to understand the meaning of a
word. In that case, antonyms help us to understand the meaning clearly. In the
dictionary, we get both the antonyms and synonyms of each word.

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Part II: SYNONYMS
Synonyms are words that are similar, or have a related meaning to another word.
Words that are synonyms are called synonymous, and the state of being
synonyms is called synonymy.

 Importance of synonyms
They help us when we want to avoid repeating the same word over and over.
Also, sometimes the words we have in mind might not be the most appropriate
word, which is why finding the right synonym can come in handy. For example
the words begin, start, commence and initiate are all synonyms of one another.
Notice that words are synonymous in one particular sense: for example long and
extended are synonymous if we want to talk about a time.

 Choosing a synonym
There is a certain skill involved in choosing the most appropriate synonym, as
not all are created equal. It is important to consider the connotation of the word
because some synonyms can inject a different meaning than the one intended.
For example, one synonym of sad is gloomy however, the word carries a
negative connotation. Depending on the circumstance you can use it, but in this
instance if you just want to say that someone is down then another synonym
such as blue or unhappy would be more appropriate.
List of some words and their synonyms:
 Happy: content, joyful
 Hardworking: determinate, enterprising
 Honest: fair, trustworthy, sincere
 Intelligent: smart, brilliant, sharp, bright
 Funny: humorous, comical, hilarious

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