Antonyms are traditionally defined as words of the same part of speech which are opposite in meaning. Antonymy is oppositeness in meaning. Not every word of a language may have an antonym though practically every word may have a synonym. Antonymy is different in different parts of speech. Different lexical-semantic variants of a word have different antonyms. Antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same part of speech which have some common denotational components in their semantic structure, but express some contrary or contradictory (contrasting) notions; they are characterized by different types of semantic contrast of denotational meaning and interchangeability at least in some contexts.
According to the relationship between the notions expressed antonyms are divided into contradictories and contraries. According to their morphological structure antonyms may be subdivided into root antonyms and derivational antonyms.
According to the relations of the general to the particular (specific) words are studied in their hyponymic relations.
