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say it: AH-puh-zuht
opposite is an adjective, noun and adverb meaning "being directly across from each other; facing". It carries 11 recorded senses.
being directly across from each other; facing
“And I on the opposite shore will be, ready to ride and spread the alarm”
“we lived on opposite sides of the street”
“at opposite poles”
moving or facing away from each other
“looking in opposite directions”
“they went in opposite directions”
the other one of a complementary pair
“the opposite sex”
“the two chess kings are set up on squares of opposite colors”
altogether different in nature or quality or significance
“the medicine's effect was opposite to that intended”
“it is said that opposite characters make a union happiest”
characterized by opposite extremes; completely opposed
“in diametric contradiction to his claims”
“diametrical (or opposite) points of view”
“opposite meanings”
“extreme and indefensible polar positions”
a word that expresses a meaning opposed to the meaning of another word, in which case the two words are antonyms of each other
“to him the antonym of `gay' was `depressed'”
a relation of direct opposition
“we thought Sue was older than Bill but just the reverse was true”
a contestant that you are matched against
something inverted in sequence or character or effect
“when the direct approach failed he tried the inverse”
directly facing each other
“the two photographs lay face-to-face on the table”
“lived all their lives in houses face-to-face across the street”
“they sat opposite at the table”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for opposite come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.