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If language A borrowed a word from language B, or both borrowed the word from a third language or inherited it from a common ancestor, and later the word shifted in meaning or acquired additional meanings in at least one of these languages, a native speaker of one language will face a false friend when learning the other.
An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings. Each word in the pair is the antithesis of the other. A word may have more than one antonym. There are three categories of antonyms identified by the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings.
An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. [1] Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym , with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite.
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word original can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
Antiphrasis is the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is obvious what the true intention is. [1] Some authors treat and use antiphrasis just as irony, euphemism or litotes. [2] When the antiphrasal use is very common, the word can become an auto-antonym, [3] having opposite meanings ...
The database takes words that are associated with at least one meaning. Apart from synonyms, it also contains some taxonomic relations. There is a German, a Dutch, a Norwegian, a Polish, a Portuguese, a Slovak, a Slovenian, a Spanish and a Greek version available. The German version has over 280,000 synonyms.
Frijolero is the most commonly used Spanish word for beaner and is particularly offensive when used by a non-Mexican person towards a Mexican in the southwestern United States. Gabacho, in Spain, is used as a derisive term for French people—and, by extension, any French-speaking individual. Among Latin American speakers, however, it is meant ...
This phrase, and its Italian (beneplacito) and Spanish (beneplácito) derivatives, are synonymous with the more common ad libitum (at pleasure). a capite ad calcem: from head to heel: i.e., "from top to bottom", "all the way through", or "from head to toe". See also a pedibus usque ad caput. a contrario: from the opposite