What is the word for words that are 'two sides of the same coin'?
What is the word for words that are 'two sides of the same coin' as they are not always opposites... such as heads and tails.
Complement?
An example would be ball and strike in baseball. They are the only two possibilities for a pitch not hit. Are the contexts?
Tragedy and comedy but not positive and negative. Reading and writing and Peace and justice but not winning and losing.
Solution 1:
I agree that complement works well in many cases. However, if you want to contrast two parts of some whole, or propose that two things can be thought of as complements, perhaps:
flip side
- an opposite, reverse, or sharply contrasted side or aspect of something or someone
The flip side of their charitable activities is a desire for publicity. Dictionary.com
The flip side of envy is, of course, idealisation. ref.
Greed is the flip side of envy. ref.
Now the flip side of envy is altruism. ref.
People-pleasing is the flip side of envy. ref.
Apropos the dialectic of religious consciousness, Aristophanic comedy offers another means of contemplating the flight of the Greek gods. As such, it is something of the flip side of the same phenomenon that tragedy reveals... Hegel on Tragedy and Comedy
The flip side of the celebration of freedom, though, is the challenge of order. ref.
This leads to grave injustice—the flip side of democracy—in the form of income concentration favoring a few and the deteriorating quality of life for the vast majority of citizens. ref.