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Saints and sinners
Mar. 18th, 2010 02:59 am(Looks like Alex Chilton got his wish tonight.)
Is there a term for words that aren't antonyms but do define mutually exclusive sets that cover all the possibilities? Unlike "either feast or famine," which contains an antonym pair (feast is the opposite of famine), I'm thinking of phrases like "neither fish nor fowl" (to mean something that fits in no category) and "saints and sinners". You wouldn't say "saint" and "sinner" were antonyms, per se, but everybody is intended to be in one set or the other, and nobody is in both. Ditto "fish" and "fowl", or "mice" and "men". "Animal, vegetable, or mineral" includes no pairs of antonyms, but they're intended to cover all the bases without overlapping.
Thoughts?
Is there a term for words that aren't antonyms but do define mutually exclusive sets that cover all the possibilities? Unlike "either feast or famine," which contains an antonym pair (feast is the opposite of famine), I'm thinking of phrases like "neither fish nor fowl" (to mean something that fits in no category) and "saints and sinners". You wouldn't say "saint" and "sinner" were antonyms, per se, but everybody is intended to be in one set or the other, and nobody is in both. Ditto "fish" and "fowl", or "mice" and "men". "Animal, vegetable, or mineral" includes no pairs of antonyms, but they're intended to cover all the bases without overlapping.
Thoughts?
