When they called him “bad as hell”, they weren’t calling him evil. It was antiphrasis.
Source: wiktionary
Antiphrasis
//ænˈtɪfrəsɪs//
Synonyms for "antiphrasis" (11 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (3)
Strong matches (3)
Related words (5)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
2 entriesRelated terms
1 entriescoordinate
3 entrieshas context
1 entriesis a
1 entriespart of
1 entriesrelated to
9 entriesTranslations
10 translations across 9 languages.
Catalan
1 entries- antífrasi noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Chinese Mandarin
1 entries- 反話 /反话 noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
French
1 entries- antiphrase noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
German
2 entries- Antiphrase noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
- Antiphrasis noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Greek
1 entries- αντίφραση noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Italian
1 entries- antifrasi noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Polish
1 entries- antyfraza noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Portuguese
1 entries- antífrase noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Spanish
1 entries- antífrasis noun (use of a word or phrase in a sense not in accord with its literal meaning)
Sample sentences
2 total sentences available.
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.
Source: wiktionary
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.