Габриела Грозданова

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Sense relations: synonymy, antonyms, reverses, converses

In the first place, it’s important to mention what does the term sense relations mean. Sense
relations is the connection between the meanings of two or more words (also phrases and
sentences). But these senses of words can be similar or dissimilar. That’s why we can
distinguish between synonyms and antonyms.

Synonymy – Synonyms are words that have similar or the same meaning but are different in
word structure and sound-form. Synonyms are very useful because they eliminate overusing
one word multiple times but one very important aspect of using synonyms is that they are
often incompatible in some contexts i.e. they have a different stylistic reference or else said
they are not interchangeable.

Example: stub/hit. We use the word stub only when we say that someone stubbed his toe
somewhere. It means hit. The words are synonyms but we cannot say I stubbed the ball
instead of I hit the ball. Although similar in meaning these words are appropriate in one
context and inappropriate in another. Another example is the pair deceitful and fabricated,
although they are synonyms in the dictionary, we cannot say that a person is fabricated,
because we use fabricated when we talk about goods.

Antonyms – Words that have the opposite meaning. We can distinguish between a few types
of antonyms:

1. Simple (true) antonyms – they are also known as direct antonyms and are
completely opposite. They exist only independently from one another such as
the opposition good/bad. They have a complementary relation which means
that not good= bad and not bad=good. The pair true/false is an another great
example because not true=false and the opposite.

2. Gradable antonyms – they are opposite in meaning but they lie on a

continuum. Let’s take the pair beautiful / ugly. When we encounter two girls
on the street and one of them is more beautiful than the other it is not necessary
that the second girl is ugly. The point is that we use gradable antonyms for
comparison. Between hot/cold pair there is some kind of a middle position,
there is no necessity to be either hot, or cold, we can say that it is warm which
lies between these extremes.

3. Converses – words that share a relation between one another but from a
different perspective. For example, husband and wife. They are connected and
 the one cannot be used without the another, they are interdependent. Another
example are the opposites borrow/ lend:
Jimmy: I borrowed my friend Tom a book.
Tom: Jimmy lent me his book.

4. Reverses – antonyms that describe the completely opposite motion with no

intermediate position between them. In the words born and die there is no
intermediate position. Another example are the verbs lock and unlock, you
either lock, or unlock the door, there is no middle position.