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I heard someone today say that lad is the opposite of lass. And we picked up a debate on whether woman is actually the opposite of man, which led me to question whether nouns can have opposites at all.

So can we say man is the opposite of woman? Can nouns even have opposites at all?

Helmar
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Chibueze Opata
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    Some nouns do, and some nouns don't. It depends. Some things come already opposed in meaning: cold/hot, dead/living, up/down, near/far, etc. Other things aren't so obviously binary. What's the opposite of blue? In one context, maybe red, or in another, maybe yellow. The thing is that "opposite of" is a binary relation, and most things don't come only in yes/no versions; there's a lot of variation and lots of grey areas. – John Lawler Jul 14 '13 at 19:26
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    Hmmm, aren't those adjectives in those cases? – Chibueze Opata Jul 14 '13 at 19:27
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    What's the opposite of "beauty"? "Ugliness". Health and illness. The opposite of "love" is "hate". There are are abstract nouns which inherently have their opposites. – Mari-Lou A Jul 14 '13 at 19:39
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    @Mari-LouA: I have a feeling that the impression of 'opposition' is giving from the 'root verbs' which these types of nouns derive from. So when there are no such root verbs, I guess that the relation has to be purely contextual like John Lawler suggests. – Chibueze Opata Jul 14 '13 at 19:46
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    Can anything have "opposites"? Red and green are generally considered opposites, and they are on the colour wheel, but the concept make no sense on the EMR spectrum. Black and white are opposites, but actually they're just our perception of the minimum and maximum light sensitivity in our eyes - our black is an Owl's grey. Totally abstract absolute concepts like left/right are opposite, but even they depend on which way you're facing... – naught101 Jul 14 '13 at 23:37
  • I remember reading in Private Eye (sadly I can't find it on their website) about a fellow on the stump in the Lahore East by-election as candidate for the Pakistan Eunuchs Party. His slogan was "Men and women have had their chance, and messed everything up. Now give us a chance!" Perhaps because of the ambiguity of his tag-line, he lost his deposit. – Brian Hooper Jul 15 '13 at 18:03
  • I think that "counterpart" is a better word than "opposite" here. – Max Williams Sep 23 '16 at 13:09

3 Answers3

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Yes, nouns can have opposites. For example, the North is the opposite of the South, at least in the American Civil War, just as left and right are opposite in direction — and in theory opposite in politics.

The problem is that most nouns can be thought of as having many different properties, and you can easily flip a property on a different axis than the one that people are thinking of.

  • man – woman
  • man – superman
  • man – boy
  • man – beast
  • man – machine
  • man – nature
  • man – nam
  • man – uɐɯ

There are many other possible axes you can flip, all of which are the “opposite” of man along that axis.

Other examples of noun pairs that most people would think of as being opposite each other include:

  • sender – receiver
  • giver – taker
  • night – day
  • noon – midnight
  • innie – outie
  • predator – prey
  • floor – ceiling
  • top – bottom
  • immigrant – emigrant
  • entrance – exit
  • upstairs – downstairs
  • basement – attic
  • front – back
tchrist
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  • Upvote for man - nam ;) – Pawan Jul 14 '13 at 19:30
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    So maybe, the problem is the meaning of the word "opposite"? If there could be a central meaning of a noun, especially proper and common nouns, can it have opposites when not used as adjectives? – Chibueze Opata Jul 14 '13 at 19:31
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    In US in the current debate, the polar opposite of immigrant is native born. More to your point of opposition dependint on hte characteristic you ar focusing on. – bib Jul 14 '13 at 19:57
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    Ah @tchrist I disagree with so many of your posts but I think this is very elegant answer +1 – Mynamite Jul 14 '13 at 20:00
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    @ChibuezeOpata: Yes, the problem is the meaning of the word "opposite". It is only meaningful in certain cases, and in those cases it's the right word. But in other cases it just doesn't point in an obvious direction and people vary in what they think about it, so it's not the right word in those cases. It's a popular term, not (usually) a technical term. – John Lawler Jul 14 '13 at 20:03
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    I find that most of the time the entrance and exit are in fact the same place. – Paul S. Jul 14 '13 at 23:10
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    @PaulS., same place, opposite direction. – zzzzBov Jul 15 '13 at 00:02
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    @PaulS. So what? The emigrants leaving Russia well be the self-same people as the immigrants arriving in America. – tchrist Jul 15 '13 at 00:08
  • @ChibuezeOpata I think you see that this is largely a question of what you mean by "opposite". One thing that I'd like to highlight is that "man" has meanings other than "male person". So, while "male" and "female" could be called 'opposite' (in most cases), "man" has meanings that are not gender-specific - as in phrases like "all men are created equal", "man the helm", "man overboard", "for the good of his fellow man", etc. Note several of tchrist's examples ("-beast", "-nature") – hunter2 Jul 15 '13 at 07:12
  • A creature can be both a predator and prey. A small bird eating a worm or insect is a predator, but compared to a larger bird that same small bird might be prey. – user Jul 15 '13 at 11:27
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    Might be worth making a distinction between a word having an opposite, and a concept having an opposite. – starwed Jan 20 '14 at 19:52
  • I like your first five opposites of man – not so keen on your last three. Overall, you make a good point, though. – J.R. Aug 14 '16 at 00:54
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Woman is the opposite gender to man. When referring to people being opposites of each other, without qualifying, it's usually about their qualities and personalities being opposites.

Chris
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It seems opposite is a merger of two concepts, a spatial oppositum and a temporal oppausatum, each from pone put and pausa stop. The spatial opposite should be known as the complement and the temporal opposite as the numerical complement. The numerical complement nullifies (as in positive and negative mass, rather than annihilates as in positive and negative charge) properties whereas the complement makes a finite set.

So a woman or mulier is a sex, rather than wif or femina the gender, whereas man is a species (a being with a mind), whereas wapman or mas is a sex and wer or vir the gender. They can't be compared to each other. Woman and wapman are complementary, not opposite; the opposite of a woman is a hýpothetic being that wrecks wombs, ovaries, and XX organelles. (One in negative mass likely can't be constructed as then like charges and quarks attract each other into unique elements. One in antimatter could work but it'd destroy anyone. One in heterokiral molecules couldn't in itself wreck a usual woman but this could be considered a complement or spatial opposite. Nucleic acids of complementary kirality can't metavolize or breed with each other.) Likewise the complement of a man is a deer or elf or troll, dependent on scale. Related to the complement and opp[au]site is the privative, that which makes none, and the negative, that which is the oppausite, and the alternative, that which is the complement. So the privative of a man could be ebola or necrotizing fasciitis, the negative of a man some anencefaly, and the alternative of a man some ape or fossil, at scales different to aforesaid.

alysdexia
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