Antonyms indicate semantic opposition, contrast with another word, antonyms are expressions with opposite meaning, for example hot-cold, smart-stupid, satiated-hungry. Poetic antonimy used by P.M. Andreevski in his poem Fire Does Not Know, Ashes Does Not Know belongs here: ashes instead of, for example: fire : water, athough this kind of juxtaposition is usualy found in sentence antonyms.

Antonyms take prominent place in structural descriptions of language lexis. Since the very beginning of structural linguistics development, its representatives emphasized the importance and the meaning of this relation for paradigmatic opposition in language (i.e. in the system).

Placed in lexicographic and word formation descriptions of meaning, the relationships between lexemes, as are the synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms, can established and organize the relations between words, but without any description of the way they function in text. The thesis that the language unites are not autonomous (depending on the context) allowed us to consider them in larger groups of words – semantic fields: paradigmatic (associative) and syntagmatic. Word formation theory also considers words and groups of words in isolation – isolated, i.e. outside of the text. This is especially true when it comes to structural methodology in language description.

Primary antonyms (these include adjectives and words included in the comparison system, for example nouns: човек (почовек, најчовек) – нечовек (понечовек, најнечовек) can be graded, for example young – old, younger – older, smart – smarter, stupid – more stupid, however, they do not indicate independent opposite qualities since they serve as lexical means for expression of gradation and comparison (for example tall – taller, old – older – oldest) (Antonyms build the paradigm on the basis of their positive pair, and hence, the opposite word will appear in all forms, emphasizing the absence of the characteristic of the positive pair.) Pairs of complementary antonyms are words in which negation of one part carries information that represents anassertion: тој е оженет – тој е неженет (he is married – he is not married). These are lexemes which are mutually excludable and opposing, for example ден и ноќ, жив и мртов (day and night, alive and dead).