Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

On the fifth day of Antonym Christmas, the Internet gave to me:
Big feeling wheel!

Read more about this diagram here.

Goodness, it took me a long time to find a version of this diagram online that spelled ecstasy correctly.

Anyhow, I like thinking about the oppositions here: trust is the opposite of disgust;  annoyance is the opposite of apprehension; serenity is the opposite of pensiveness. Love is the opposite of remorse.

 

many kinds of 'happy'

One thing that always interests me as an antonymist is how a single positive term can have many different-meaning opposites. So, sweet can be the opposite of sour, salty or bitter, depending on context, and happy is opposed to sad, angry, and possibly others. It reminds me of the Anna Karenina principle: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anyhow, I like T-Rex's attention to the different kinds of positive emotion (click to enlarge):

Happy for deep people

Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.
Kathy Nightingale: What's good about sad?
Sally Sparrow: It's happy for deep people.
—'Blink', Doctor Who (2007)

A Not-Suitable-for-Children case of simultaneous antonymy

Some work that we did in the oughties looked at the relative proportions of "Simultaneous Antonymy" (Steve Jones's term) in English, Swedish, and Japanese. Simultaneous use of antonyms is when both are used at the same time about the same thing, like It's both warm and cool now. You don't find many of these in English, but you find more in Swedish than in English, and more in Japanese than in Swedish. (The relevant articles are in our special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics.)

So I enjoyed finding this simultaneous case in the wild. The wild here being the Tiger Lillies' Facebook page (which is indeed fairly wild).

Sadiq

Congratulations to Sadiq Khan, elected Mayor of London yesterday. Though I'm not in London, I've enjoyed the news, consumed mostly through Twitter.

This one really belongs on my other blog:

Sadiq Khan is "the British Barack Obama". In the sense that people often double the consonant in the middle of his first name.

— Tom Freeman (@SnoozeInBrief) 7 May 2016

But here's the name-based antonym content:

Sadiq. pic.twitter.com/C33PMcnGXD

— Peter Johnstone (@peterwdj) 7 May 2016

Happyq. pic.twitter.com/sWxXvgheqU

— Peter Johnstone (@peterwdj) 7 May 2016

sad meals and children's antonym use

Recently posted by Epic Parenting on Facebook:

I love seeing/hearing kids thinking about opposites. Here are a couple of up/down examples from the CHILDES database, used in Steve Jones' and my research on antonymy in childhood.  These are both by a then-two-year-old named ABE:

ABE: Cookie Monster drinks it down and I drink it up

ABE:  is it dry down or dry up?

FATHER:   dry up it’ll dry up soon I’m not sure why but it’s dry up instead of dry down

And then there are some oddities from my kid:

G: (to toy monkey):  You're just waking up in your awaking bag.
Me: is the sleeping bag an awaking bag now?
G: no, it's a sleeping bag.
Me: But didn't you say 'awaking bag'?
G: I was just speaking in the African way.  (3 years, 2 months)

(Describing her dad making soup from the cherry tomatoes she picked:)
It's whizzing and then it comes up not-tomato. (2 years, 10 months)

 

(On the way to work/creche)
Me: We're on the right train.
G:  Where's the left train? (2 years, 9 months)

(Getting ready to play with play-doh:)
G: Let's make a farm--with piggelets!
Phil: Piglets are hard... [to make]
G: No! Piggelets are soft!  (2 years, 6 months)

M: I can't do that.
G: [contradicting] Yes you can't!
M: Yes, I can.
G: Yes, you can't!
M: Yes, I can.
G: Yes, you can!
M: Yes, I _can_.
G: Yes, you can't!   (2 years, 2 months)

G (at dinner): "Stop talking about furniture and start talking about me." (3 years, 6 months)

         G: "But Mum, why does good grief have good in it?" (3 years, 8 months)

But this one has to be the best:

G:  You are fat to cuddle.
Me: (!!) Is it better to cuddle fat people or thin people?
G:  Thin people. ... Mummy, I love you. I really love you.  (3 years, 1 month)