antonym
/ˈæn.təˌnɪm/
"antonym" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“antonym” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A word which has the opposite meaning of another word.
Corpus desk
Index EN-antonym · antonym · English
antonym · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "A" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | antonym |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈæn.təˌnɪm/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “antonym” in English
Rare enough to double-check
antonym is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈæn.təˌnɪm/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for antonym in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French antonyme (1840s and 1850s), which was modeled on earlier synonyme and influenced by the etymons of Ancient Greek ἀντωνυμία (antōnumía, “pronoun”); credit for popularization of the French loanword's naturalization into English is given principall… The correct English form is antonym, spelled A-N-T-O-N-Y-M.
Definition
- 1A word which has the opposite meaning of another word.
- 2A word which has the opposite meaning of another word.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how antonym appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
“Rich” is an antonym of “poor”; “full” is an antonym of “empty”.
All four lines of the pattern are required to establish that hot and cold are antonyms. The water is hot entails The water is not cold. The water is cold entails The water is not hot. The water is not hot does not entail The water is cold. The water is not cold does not entail The water is hot.
Etymology
From French antonyme (1840s and 1850s), which was modeled on earlier synonyme and influenced by the etymons of Ancient Greek ἀντωνυμία (antōnumía, “pronoun”); credit for popularization of the French loanword's naturalization into English is given principally to Charles John Smith and his 1867 book Synonyms and Antonyms: Or, Kindred Words and Their Opposites. Collected and Contrasted. By surface analysis, ant- + -onym.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.