Glossary:Ancillary Antonymy

Ancillary antonymy

A subgroup of antonymy that accounts for 40-50% of antonym occurences and therefore represents the largest group among the different sorts.

Pronounciation

/ænˈsɪləri ˈæntənɪmi/

General definition

Ancillary antonymy is used when the contrast of a more established antonym pair is used to generate or reinforce the contrast of a second, parallel pair of opposites. This type is normally used when the second word pair is usally not perceived as antonyms.
Ancillary antonymy reflects the human tendency to categorize in dichotomies, to think in binary opposites as good and bad.

General pattern

There is no general pattern.

Examples

Communism may be dead but fascism is most actually alive.
It is meeting public need, not private greed.

References

• Jones, Stephen; Murphy, M. Lynne (2005). Using corpora to investigate antonym acquisition. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10:3. John Benjamin Publishing Company.
• Murphy, M. Lynne; Jones, Stephen (2008 November). Antonyms in children's and child-directed speech. First language 28 (4[87]).

Linked Pages

• Coordinated Antonymy
• Residual Antonyms