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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.
An aptronym, aptonym, or euonym is a personal name aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner (e.g. their occupation). [1]Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post coined the word inaptonym as an antonym for "aptonym".
The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite, but antonym also has other more restricted meanings. Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold).
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.
An example of a backronym as a mnemonic is the Apgar score, used to assess the health of newborn babies.The rating system was devised by and named after Virginia Apgar.Ten years after the initial publication, the backronym APGAR was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration. [6]
Nominative determinism differs from the related concept aptronym, and its synonyms 'aptonym', 'namephreak', and 'Perfect Fit Last Name' (captured by the Latin phrase nomen est omen 'the name is a sign'), in that it focuses on causality. 'Aptronym' merely means the name is fitting, without saying anything about why it has come to fit.
The following is a list of common metonyms. [n 1] A metonym is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance, "Westminster", a borough of London in the United Kingdom, could be used as a metonym for the ...
babysit from babysitter [2] [4]; back-form from back-formation; bartend from bartender [5]; beg from beggar [dubious – discuss]; benefact from benefactor (and also the derived benefactee, cf. benefactor)