- Complementary antonyms are "opposites" which have an either / or relationship - eg child/adult; dead/alive; push/pull - you are either a child or an adult, and cannot be both at once. Similarly something cannot be both dead and alive at the same time, and if you are pushing something you cannot be pulling it at the same time. The either/or relationship means that complementary antonyms are considered ungradable.
- Complementary antonyms are not always pairs of words, but may be what Gairns and Redman (1986) and other writers call Multiple Incompatibles - eg spring /summer / autumn / winter Monday/Tuesday Wednesday (etc) red/ yellow/ green/blue (etc) hearts/spades/clubs/diamonds January/February /March etc. But the either/or relationship still holds: if it is Monday today it cannot be any other day of the week; if a card is a spade, it cannot belong to any of the other suits.
- Other types of antonyms are gradable antonyms and converse antonyms
Reference
Gairns, R and Redman, S (1986) Working with Words, CUP
