Wordsmith.org
Posted By: togdon Antonym for "soon" - 03/29/00 03:39 PM
This morning on my drive to work I struggled to think of a one word antonym for the word "soon." I've exhausted all of the online antonym search sites to no avail. I know this has to be an easy one, but I'm stumped...

--
Unix: Where /sbin/init is still Job 1
Posted By: Jackie Re: Antonym for "soon" - 03/29/00 09:18 PM
'Presently' and 'later' jumped to mind at first.
Checked thesaurus, found 'subsequently' and 'latterly'.
Hope these help.

Posted By: Lady Re: Antonym for "soon" - 03/31/00 04:16 AM
My first thoughts were: presently or without delay

Posted By: gin Re: Antonym for "soon" - 04/03/00 01:46 AM
Antonym for "soon" would be "later"...as in "I'll do it soon, but you can do it later."

Posted By: Philip Davis Re: Antonym for "soon" - 04/03/00 12:05 PM
I suppose that 'never' could be consider an antonym, although, in practice, it is often a synonym.

Posted By: Jackie Re: Antonym for "soon" - 04/03/00 03:07 PM
Re-read your question, and now I'm thinking my initial
reponse was off the mark. In mathematical terms, were you thinking of 'soon' being like a positive number, and 'now' being zero, and therefore the antonym you're searching for would correspond to a negative number?
If so, what about "recently"? Jackie

Posted By: Philophile Re: Antonym for "soon" - 04/27/00 12:31 AM
If you treat "soon" as an adverb (as in "It will happen soon"), the closest I can come to an antonym would be something like "eventually", "sometime", "someday", or even "never".

[P.]
Posted By: wsieber Re: Antonym for "soon" - 04/27/00 05:12 AM
Hi,
Why should every word have an antonym, especially a vague one like "soon", which evokes a vast stretch of desert? You could just as well ask for the opposite of "perhaps" - (oh no, it's not "certainly"). Some words seem to be used frequently just because they have no straightforward opposite. This makes contradiction more difficult. What do you think of that?

Posted By: tsuwm ACROnym for "soon" - 04/27/00 02:55 PM
Have I got the deal for you! here's an intensifier for the all too vague 'soon', and it's an acronym to boot:

RSN [Real Soon Now] 1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical.

2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath).

http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
Posted By: wsieber Re: ACROnym for "soon" - 04/28/00 05:56 AM
Thank you, tsuwm,
Yet my bill is pretty well filled with "ASAP", which occurs in every other mail on our company intranet..
I meant that the vagueness is actually an asset of "soon". In the meantime it occurred to me that such words could be called "half-way words", and that they typically have TWO antonyms, like "never" and "presently" in this case.

Posted By: jmh Re: Antonym for "soon" - 04/28/00 06:04 AM
Philip writes: I suppose that 'never' could be consider an antonym, although, in practice, it is often a synonym.

As a parent I see where he is going.

In my experience this takes us to a link with another posting - words that are their own antonym.

Q: "When are we going to get there" A: "Soon"







Posted By: tsuwm Re: ACROnym for "soon" - 04/28/00 01:14 PM
>like "never" and "presently" in this case

in the right hands, "presently" can itself be stunningly vague. <g>

http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
© Wordsmith.org