Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 October 20

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October 20

Forward

Forward can be an adverb, an adjective, a verb, or a noun. But backward has no noun or verb definitions. Why this mismatch?? Georgia guy (talk) 10:36, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Why not? Really, why would you expect the two words to have the same range of meanings and uses? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:00, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

They are antonyms; does English have plenty of antonym pairs where only one of them can be used in certain ways?? Georgia guy (talk) 11:12, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Backward is the antonym for certain uses of forward, not for all of them. Some of them may not have antonyms. Or even be capable of having antonyms. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:44, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

As an example, there are many uses of "light" where there is no corresponding opposite usage of "dark". You can light a fire, but not dark one. A weight may be light, but not dark. You can "light out" of somewhere, but staying is not described as "dark in". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:47, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Light's antonym can be dark or heavy depending on the meaning of the word. Georgia guy (talk) 11:50, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

And forward may not have an antonym depending on the meaning of the word. How is this confusing? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Or no antonym at all. There is the meaning which means basically to "settle down onto a lower surface", as in to light from a horse (to dismount it) or to when birds light on a branch. See Light verb (2) here. Not everything has an antonym; indeed most words do not; the world does not mostly consist of binary pairs, and language does not either. --Jayron32 11:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

does English have plenty of antonym pairs where only one of them can be used in certain ways?? Sure it does. "Short" can be a verb while "tall" cannot. "Adult" can be an adjective; "child" cannot. "Dead" can be a noun; "alive" cannot. "Divide" can be a noun; "unite" cannot (except historically as the name of a coin). "Empty" can be a verb; "full" can but it's very rare. "Exit" can be a verb; "entrance" cannot (except in the sense and pronunciation meaning "to put into a trance"). "Increase" can be a noun; "reduce" cannot. "Present" can be a noun; "absent" generally is not. "Brave" can be a noun; "cowardly" cannot. "Complex" can be a noun; "simple" generally cannot. "End" can be a noun; "begin" cannot.

One might quibble about some of these examples, but the claim that antonyms generally have analogous uses as parts of speech is not supportable. CodeTalker (talk) 23:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I also feel the need to remind the OP, who seems to ignore every time this is explained is that human language is not designed. It was not created intelligently to follow predictable rules, it evolves over time and space largely arbitrarily. There are some very broad rules of thumb that exist because there is some patternicity to language, but the expectation should NEVER be that a language is rigidly consistent. At some point, a person should be able to observe the myriad inconsistencies within any language, and stop expecting it to be perfectly explainable, or to follow some understandable system. It does a bit, but lots of language also doesn't. --Jayron32 15:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Forward doesn't really have a lot of noun uses. It's a common misspelling of foreword; other than that, it's mainly used in sport. And in sport, "defender" just sounds better than "backward". And note that backward was actually used as a noun by Shakespeare. Andreas JN466 18:13, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The OED has definitions of "backward" as an adverb, adjective, verb, and noun, just like "forward", although the use of "backward" as a verb or noun is much less common than the use of "forward" in those senses. Here's the Shakespeare citation referred to above: What seest thou els In the dark-backward and Abisme of Time? (from The Tempest). And here it is used as a verb: One that doth so clog and trash, so disadvantage and backward us. (from a 1664 sermon). But yes, the bottom line is that language does not follow simple logical rules and it's hard to understand why the OP keeps asking these questions that seem to assume that it does. CodeTalker (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

If language were logical, there wouldn't be irregular verbs. I also wonder: What's the antonym of "Georgia"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:42, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

States of the United States don't have antonyms. Georgia guy (talk) 23:52, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

"Mindless"? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:59, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

That would be a synonym of "cracker". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:46, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

As in "crackpot" or as an ethnic slur?... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:43, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't understood that "cracker" was state-specific, but it should be a bit of historical overlap between African-American English and Southern English, so I guess it sorta makes sense... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:48, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, some do: North Carolina ☍ South Carolina, North Dakota ☍ South Dakota, DC ☍ AC, Virgin Islands ☍ Fucket Island, Texas ☍ Idaho, Florida ☍ Nevada --Error (talk) 12:28, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

There's the concept of "taxonomic sisters", which sometimes are also described as antonyms. In regular antonymy if something is big, it can't be small, and similarly in taxonomy if a U.S. state is Georgia, it can't be Alabama. Thus "Georgia" has 49 taxonomic sisters, or antonyms. --Theurgist (talk) 14:11, 26 October 2022 (UTC)