Opposite

In a mathematical sense, the opposite of "X" is "not X" and this works in all cases. But in language text books, or in common usage, there is a lot of ambiguity in "opposite". Eg. Father ~ Mother ... More on english.stackexchange.com

It's actually quite easy to argue that 'friend' is not the opposite of 'enemy'. It all depends on context, and what we mean by 'friend', 'enemy', and (especially) 'opposite'. First, as far as context goes, let's say it's the set of people you socialize with. We might then meaningfully oppose 'friend' and mere 'acquaintance.' Along this kind of axis, maybe the opposite poles would be something like 'best friend' or 'spouse' or something at the one end, and 'stranger' at the other. I actually want to focus on the definitional aspect, but I think it's important to first recognize that the meaning of a definition typically depends on the context in which it's being deployed. So if you're organizing coats on a coatrack for a store display, maybe 'warm winter coat' and 'light summer jacket' represent opposite poles. If you're arranging the torso coverings in your own clothes closet, maybe your winter coat and your lightest t-shirt are the two extremes. If the relevant trait is a kind of 1-dimensional ordered continuum, you'll wind up with two opposite extremes that represent the two 'polar opposites'. In that case, your two opposed extreme examples will be the "opposites." If, instead, you have two mutually exclusive categories into which you're trying to sort some set of objects, the two opposed categories themselves will be the opposites. E.g., short-sleeved vs. long-sleeved shirts; or shirts vs. pants. Is "pants" then the opposite of "shirts"? In my closet it is. Well, unless you count things like socks and underwear and shoes and belts, etc. But when I'm trying to hang up the laundry, the domain of objects under consideration doesn't include those things. The task doesn't require a full taxonomy of clothing items from togas to tiaras, tuxedos, and tank tops. I'm just separating the shirts from the pants. But we can get a bit more rigorous in our use of these words, too. Aristotle talks quite a bit about opposites. One helpful distinction he draws is that between 'contradictory,' 'contrary,' and 'subcontrary' opposition. Contradictories are absolutely binary and mutually exclusive. The contradictory opposite of 'a warm winter coat' is just 'not a warm winter coat'. For any definite thing whatsoever, there are exactly two options: (1) it is a warm winter coat, and (2) it is not a warm winter coat. In every case, either (1) is true and (2) is false, or (2) is true and (1) is false. This isn't actually the best example, however, since there isn't really any distinct boundary between the warm winter coats and the non-warm winter coats. This is also true about 'winter' and 'coats', but it's most obvious with 'warm'. But regardless, neither 'light summer jacket' nor 't-shirt' is a contradictory opposite of 'warm winter coat', since it's always possible for something to be none of the above. Contraries are, in a sense, the opposite of subcontraries. When a statement is true, its contradictory is necessarily false; and when it's false, the contradictory is necessarily true. But this isn't the case for contraries and subcontraries. Contraries cannot both be true, but they can both be false. A good example is the odd and even numbers. A number cannot be both odd and even, but it can be neither. Subcontraries can both be true, but they cannot both be false. Using the same example, not-odd and not-even are subcontraries. A number can be not-odd without necessarily being not-even (i.e., it can be an even number), and it can be not-even without being not-odd (i.e., an odd number), but it cannot be neither not-odd nor not-even (for this would be an even odd number). My subcontrary example is a bit clumsy, but it does illustrate the relationship between contraries and subcontraries. 'Even' is stronger than, and entails, 'not-odd'. And for a given statement ("n is even"), the contrary ("n is odd") and the subcontrary ("n is not-odd") are contradictories of each other. Also, we can use this example to illustrate my point about context. If we're talking about numbers in general, 'odd' and 'even' are merely contraries; but if we're specifically talking only about natural numbers, then the very same binary opposition (viz. 'odd' vs. 'even') becomes a contradictory opposition. So just to wrap up with friends and enemies again, we might distinguish people simply based on how well known they are to us. Along that axis, 'friend' and 'enemy' might be very close, and 'stranger' somewhere near the opposite pole. Maybe we want to distinguish based on something like rank in a social power hierarchy. Superiors above, inferiors below, and peers in the middle. Friends and enemies would likely both cluster around the middle. Or we can distinguish, say, friends, relatives, colleagues, lovers, enemies, etc. Even among those five, it's not clear that 'friends' and 'enemies' would be opposites. The only case in which friends and enemies are clearly opposites is when we are specifically drawing a "friend-enemy" distinction (rather than a 'friend-lover' distinction, or an 'enemy-neutral bystander' distinction, etc.). It's like Nietzsche's point in the Genealogy of Morals — within the meaning of the specific 'good/bad' distinction, good is the opposite of bad. But within the 'good/evil' distinction, the opposite of good is not bad, but evil. Bottom line, my answer to your question is "it depends," and if by 'TRUE answer' you meant 'answer that does not depend,' then no, the question does not have a true answer. But neither does the question, "Is the opposite of 'friend' an enemy or an anonymous stranger or both or perhaps neither?" More on reddit.com

Nimrod. Great hunter from the Bible. Now refers to someone inadequate. I believe it is because of a Bugs Bunny episode where Bugs calls Elmer Fudd Nimrod. The sarcasm went over peoples' heads.

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