Word.ws English Dictionary

antiphrase

antiphrase noun: a word or phrase used in a sense that is different to its literal or usual meaning.

Noun

antiphrase (plural antiphrases)

  1. A word or phrase used in a sense that is different to its literal or usual meaning.
    • [T]he first man came right up to me and held out his hand in the European manner of greeting, save only that it was the left hand instead of the right, and in an English the most mutilated and full of antiphrases I had ever heard said that he was my friend[.]1946, Jack McLaren, The Oldest Inhabitants, quoted in An Australian Muster, page 10

Forms of antiphrase

pluralantiphrases

Questions about antiphrase

What does antiphrase mean?
Antiphrase means a word or phrase used in a sense that is different to its literal or usual meaning.
What part of speech is antiphrase?
Antiphrase is a noun.
What is the plural of antiphrase?
The plural of antiphrase is antiphrases.

Words near antiphrase in the dictionary

  1. antiphotocopying
  2. antiphotodamage
  3. antiphotography
  4. antiphoton
  5. antiphotons
  6. antiphrase
  7. antiphrases
  8. antiphrasis
  9. antiphrastic
  10. antiphrastical
  11. antiphrastically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: antiphrase (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “antiphrase.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/antiphrase. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.