Skill 21
Know Your Antonyms

In earlier lessons you dealt with synonyms, words that have the same meaning as another word. Antonyms are just the opposite. The antonym of a word is a word that has the opposite meaning. Think of the word love; what is its opposite? Yes, it’s hate. Think of the word finish. Its antonym is start. What about the antonym of minor? Yes, it’s major.

Why do you need to know antonyms? If you can identify the antonym of a word, that shows that you know what the original word means. Knowing antonyms builds your vocabulary and helps you learn new words. It helps you score well on the ASVAB, particularly on the Paragraph Comprehension and Word Knowledge tests, but also on other tests that require knowing words.

Here are some examples of antonyms. When you read the original word, see if you can think of the antonym before reading the answer.

When you look at the list above, notice that if you think of the word in the right-hand column as the original word, the word in the left-hand column becomes its antonym.

Test Yourself!

For each of the following words listed in the left hand column, write at least one antonym in the column on the right.