Dictionary

antiphrasis en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ænˈtɪfrəsɪs/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin antiphrasis, itself a borrowing from Ancient Greek ἀντίφρασις (antíphrasis) (< phrazein "declare").

Meanings

1. (countable, rhetoric, uncountable) Use of a word or phrase in a sense opposite of its literal meaning, especially for ironic or humorous effect.
   • When they called him “bad as hell”, they weren’t calling him evil. It was antiphrasis.
   • By the turn of this century the situation concerning logic was quite simple: there was basically one logic (classical logic) which could be used (by changing the set of proper axioms) in various situations. Logic was about pure reasoning. Brouwer’s criticism destroyed this dream of unity: classical logic was not suited for constructive features and therefore it lost its universality. Now by the end of the century we are faced with an incredible number of logics-some of them only named ‘logic’ by antiphrasis, some of them introduced on serious grounds. 1991 June 20, Jean-Yves Girard, “On the unity of logic”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), number 59, North-Holland, page 201:

Forms

Coordinates

parasynonymy · antonymy · synonymy

Hypernyms

nonsynonymy

Relateds

antiphrastic

Translations (10)

es antífrasis (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · de Antiphrasis (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · de Antiphrase (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · pl antyfraza (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · ca antífrasi (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · pt antífrase (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · cmn 反話 /反话 (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · it antifrasi (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · el αντίφραση (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning) · fr antiphrase (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)