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I thought these weren't antonyms. |
If I'm not mistaken, not all opposites are antonyms but all antonyms are opposites. This particular combination may not be an antonym, so if I'm wrong about that I apologize.
One thing of note I should mention. While the opposite of "sweet" always turns up "sour" in my mind, the opposite of "bitter" is certainly "sweet". So while I wouldn't think "bitter" is the best word to list as the opposite, it matches the description. I asked a few other people those questions and got the same answers ("What is the opposite of sweet? Sour. What is the opposite of bitter? Sweet."), for whatever it's worth. |
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The problem is that a lot of words do not have an exact opposite. If sweet is a taste sensation, it does not necessarily have an opposite sensation such as hot versus cold. |
Not all opposites are complementaries (ie hot vs cold, good vs bad). That is only one type of opposite. For example, a "parent" vs a "child" are not complementaries, but they are a type of opposite. So even if it's not as straightforward as "tall" vs "short", the word "sweet" still does have an opposite. It might, in fact, have multiple opposites as I pointed out in a previous post (example: "stationary" vs "moving" "speeding" "flying" or a number of other words).
To add to what I said before, antonyms are gradable opposites; I'm still not 100% certain whether sweet to sour is gradable (I'm sure there are ways to measure how sweet or sour something is, I just don't know them), which is why I said I'm not sure if it was an antonym or not. It is, however, an opposite, and either way my statement regarding antonyms stands: All antonyms are opposites, but not all opposites are antonyms. |
I think the opposite of sour is bitter.:twocents:
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The figurative use of sweet/bitter as opposites is also logical. For example, one may say: Oh how sweet it would be to be reunited with my loved one/ones; and also: I fought bitterly with my spouse ( we don't say I fought sourly); Although sour is sometimes used to describe a relationship that had gone bad. It does not describe it in an extreme way. The word "Bitter" had been used to describe extreme divorce procedures between husbands and wives. This is just my opinion and I'm open to be persuaded otherwise.:):thinking: |
I totally understand the (ongoing) debate about "opposites" vs. "antonyms". But when I originally proposed this thread, I was only going for the kinds of things that are taught to school children ... at least taught to school children in the US ... up/down, black/white, crazy/sane, left/right, east/west, etc.....
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Just two small corrections: no space before a comma and if you change the place of the accent mark, the word will have to be pronounced differently. :)
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Apático - Dinámico
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