Antonyms are a particular form of negation, in which there is an implied scale and the negation refers to the other side of that same range, usually with similar conceptual distance from some neutral point. “Cool” is an antonym for “warm”, while “freezing” is more of an antonym for “boiling”. An antonym does not refer to something that is merely as different as possible.
White and black are antonyms, denoting places at the ends of an implied grey scale that almost anyone will be familiar with. Black and red could be antonyms in a more abstract sense as denoting the equal and opposite colours assigned to squares on a checkerboard, but that would be rather obscure.
There is no general antonym for “flower”, since there is no clear implied scale on which a flower exists at one point and something else exists on the other side with similar conceptual distance.
If you want a word for a relation between words that are simply different in as many conceptual dimensions as possible, may I suggest “disparonym”? There is still a difficulty of agreeing upon which subsets of conceptual dimensions are more important than others, but at least the term won’t be conflicting with established meaning.
Antonyms are a particular form of negation, in which there is an implied scale and the negation refers to the other side of that same range, usually with similar conceptual distance from some neutral point. “Cool” is an antonym for “warm”, while “freezing” is more of an antonym for “boiling”. An antonym does not refer to something that is merely as different as possible.
White and black are antonyms, denoting places at the ends of an implied grey scale that almost anyone will be familiar with. Black and red could be antonyms in a more abstract sense as denoting the equal and opposite colours assigned to squares on a checkerboard, but that would be rather obscure.
There is no general antonym for “flower”, since there is no clear implied scale on which a flower exists at one point and something else exists on the other side with similar conceptual distance.
If you want a word for a relation between words that are simply different in as many conceptual dimensions as possible, may I suggest “disparonym”? There is still a difficulty of agreeing upon which subsets of conceptual dimensions are more important than others, but at least the term won’t be conflicting with established meaning.
That is your connotation of an antonym, which seldom someone uses. The world isn’t in scales