FOB

I keep wanting to blog about my latest tiny piece of software, but I keep having one more bug or feature.

So instead, I've cooked up this little word game. Tell me what you think of it…

This is an exercise in antonyms—words with opposite meanings. A word can have a lot of different opposites, depending on which meaning is intended and on what property of the word is being considered. An interesting antonym will be a "natural opposite" both in substance and style.

For each word below, give its most natural "opposite" starting with the given letter.

1. antonym :: s—
2. arcane :: m—
3. aristocratic :: p—
4. coerce :: e—
5. embrace :: a—
6. exacerbate :: a—
7. exotic :: q—
8. sostenuto :: s—
9. reduce :: o—
10. materialize :: d—

When you are finished and want to check your work, the answers are here

If you comment on specific answers, please do so in comments on the answer page rather than here. I've tried to pick entries with unique answers; it will be interesting to know if someone finds an acceptable alternative for any of these.

Let me know if you enjoyed this, so that I can decide whether to do more such things in the future.