Synonyms and antonyms · Grade 2
Synonyms are words with the same or nearly the same meaning: big and large. Antonyms are words with opposite meanings: hot and cold. Knowing them helps you understand new words, avoid repeating yourself and choose the best word for what you mean.
Key facts
- Synonyms mean nearly the same: happy, glad, cheerful; begin and start.
- Synonyms are rarely exactly the same: enormous is bigger than big, and furious is angrier than cross. Pick the one that fits best.
- Antonyms are opposites: early/late, empty/full, win/lose.
- One word can have different antonyms: old is the opposite of new (a car) and of young (a person).
- Prefixes can make antonyms: happy → unhappy, agree → disagree, possible → impossible, correct → incorrect, legal → illegal, regular → irregular.