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Binary pairs of opposites - Magical Realist - Nov 3, 2025
Been wrestling with the concept of opposites--of either words or things existing in binary pairs each of which excludes the other in some way. Black and white. Up and down. Visible and invisible. Big and little. Is it the words that are opposite or the things referred to by the words that are opposite? I would say it is the words due to the fact that it largely concerns the semantic definition of the word. Trying to locate the ascribed opposite quality in the thing itself just collapses quickly into hopeless relativities and an overabundance of properties. Like calling myself smart as opposed to dumb. A very loose and broadly-defined distinction that APPEARS to be mutually exclusive but may not be in reality. Smartness and dumbness are matters of degree after all, and everyone has some things they are smart about and some things they are dumb about.
What I find particularly fascinating is how such binary pairs of descriptors only really exist in contrast to each other. Would I for example have any concept of up without the contrasting opposite of down? Fat vs skinny? Awake vs asleep? It seems not, at least in the case of some opposites. This suggests that the very possibility of the definition of the word lies not so much in the word itself as in its distinction from its opposite. Consciousness then of certain things remarkably reliant on contrast between opposite descriptors, a rather linguistic habit of contradistinction that has little to do with the things themselves! Meaning as at least partially relational instead of referential.
Further contemplation on opposites opens me up to more unexplored possibilities. Why do some words have opposites while others don't? Like home. There's no opposite to the word home, and we still have a roughly consensual idea of what it means. But even here there's heavy reliance on non-objective relational factors like context and use and subjective associations. Does the word "home" spoken by a homeless person mean the same thing as when it is spoken by a billionaire? At best we hone in on what is just a nebulous cluster of meanings and possible referents and images, allowing the word to assume manifold meanings for everyone. It seems having a binary opposite word to a descriptor quickly dispels the ambiguity
its meaning, as if this word means just this one thing and one thing only. Opposites then as sort of pseudo definitions, provisionally establishing objective states of being where in fact there are none.
RE: Binary pairs of opposites - Syne - Nov 3, 2025
Negations, whether opposite or nothing, are all relative. Nothing of what. Opposite to what. All negations present relative possibilities.
The opposites of home are away or homeless.