ABSTRACT
Given that antonymy is ‘the only sense relation to receive direct lexical recognition in everyday language’ (Cruse 2000: 167), one might expect to find that a robust system of classification has emerged. However, though antonymy has been the subject of continual linguistic scrutiny, not all analysts have reached the same conclusions. Granted, most commentators categorise antonymous pairs according to broadly similar criteria, but the terminology used to describe these categories is anything but standard. Furthermore, an adequate definition of antonymy has yet to be agreed upon. Though all speakers can easily recall a lengthy list of ‘opposites’, describing this relation in a clear, concise fashion has proved problematic. Antonymy is a phenomenon better suited to exemplification than definition.
