Each Tuesday, language expert Professor Emertius Roly Sussex discusses the vagaries of language with Richard Fidler. This week Aaron Kearney accepts the challenge to go head to head with the knowledgeable professor on the topic of 'Nyms.
Antonyms, synonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms.
So many nyms, so little time.
This week Roly clarifies the unique differences between all the nyms of the English language, and there are a lot!
"The most common ones are antonyms and synonyms. The 'syn' in synonym is the same as 'sym' in symphony and it means 'with'.
"So symphony is 'sounds played with someone' and synonym is 'a meaning that is shared with one'.
But Roly asks the question about whether there is any synonyms at all?
"The more you look at words which are supposed to be synonyms, the more you find little differences, for example 'tall and high'.
A person is tall, a mountain is high, but a building can be either tall or high.
"So the two, although they apparently mean 'extended vertically to a notable extention'; they have different collocations, (words they can occur with).
Antonyms are opposites, and Roly says there are more than there are synonyms - but antonyms need to be 'gradeable'.
"And that means it can be more or most - so tall, taller, tallest. (tall, short fat, thin are all examples.)
"Most are adjectives.
Roly says often antonyms are confused with 'converses' - which are complimentary to each other, but not opposite in the same way that antonyms like 'tall and short' are.
"If I Sell something to you, you buy it from me; if I'm your parent, you're my child; if I'm your teacher, you're my student."
Roly also explains the retronym: "A word that is invented after the event -to clarify what was already clear before.
For example - an acoustic guitar once was only referred to as a guitar, until the electric guitar was created - which meant the original guitar needed to be named something in order to differentiate it from the electric.
This week Roly also set the challenge for the weird word to listeners: "Give the full form and meaning of Latin expressions like i.e., e.g., also in flagrante delicto (in the flaming transgression)."
Each week, Professor Roly Sussex's language segment with 612 ABC Brisbane's Richard Fidler is available as a podcast. To subscribe, paste this link: http://www.abc.net.au/local/podcasts/inyourear.xml into your podcasting application, or visit our podcast page.