Is “man” the opposite of “woman”?
I heard someone today say that lad is the opposite of lass. And we picked up a debate on whether woman is actually the opposite of man, which led me to question whether nouns can have opposites at all.
So can we say man is the opposite of woman? Can nouns even have opposites at all?
Yes, nouns can have opposites. For example, the North is the opposite of the South, at least in the American Civil War, just as left and right are opposite in direction — and in theory opposite in politics.
The problem is that most nouns can be thought of as having many different properties, and you can easy flip a property on a different axis than the one that people are thinking of.
- man – woman
- man – superman
- man – boy
- man – beast
- man – machine
- man – nature
- man – nam
- man – uɐɯ
There are many other possible axes you can flip, all of which are the “opposite” of man along that axis.
Other examples of noun pairs that most people would think of as being opposite each other include:
- sender – receiver
- giver – taker
- night – day
- noon – midnight
- innie – outie
- predator – prey
- floor – ceiling
- top – bottom
- immigrant – emigrant
- entrance – exit
- upstairs – downstairs
- basement – attic
- front – back
Woman is the opposite gender to man. When referring to people being opposites of each other, without qualifying, it's usually about their qualities and personalities being opposites.