boop2004: I think someone is just making fun of you. :)

Pedro Martínez: Thanks for answering that.!

Is there an opposite for the word 'torn' in English?

For example I say "My shirt is torn."

Now if my shirt is not torn, is there a way to say it without saying "is not torn."

Like the opposite of expensive is cheap.

King Reza: There is "tear"

I have a tear in my shirt.

I dont think there is a word opposite for torn only un-torn i think.
I hope that helps.

King Reza: I would probable say "is not torn" - and would probable never say un-torn, if that helps.

King Reza: whole, undamaged intact

King Reza: If it's not torn, then it's intact or whole.

Or are you referring to when a shirt was torn but it's not anymore? In that case it probably was mended.

In farsi, do you use the sentence "my shirt is not torn" often? I think it's one of those words that you only use for the positive - if it's torn you say it's torn; if not then it's probably something else but I don't hear people describing a shirt as not being torn very often - unless something is said about it you assume it's not :)

King Reza: I'd not say inexpensive is the synonym of cheap. Even saying it's low priced is a better opposite. Something cheaply priced maybe, but to just say cheap is not how I'd say it.

Further research found this link:
http://www.synonym.com/synonym/inexpensive
Perhaps you're right about cheap and inexpensive. It just seems that where I live the word cheap is not used for some reason unless there's something wrong with what it is you're talking about. Perhaps this is just in my area and how advertisers and television can twist the meanings and usages of words.

By the way this link might help you find lots of opposites and alikes (antonyms)

Walter Montego:

expensive is the opposite of cheap
inexpensive is the same as cheap

WatfordFC:When you have a tear in your shirt it is torn!  Is it not?
And every single reply helps.  Thank you.

BIG BAD WOLF:  Well, when you as a native speaker say you'd never say 'untorn,' and another says that she thinks 'untorn' is a word, how can I have any idea? 

King Reza:

untorn may technically be a word but it is in common usage

pauloaguia:Yeah, I did think of 'intact' myself, but wasn't sure if it'd be O.K..  To my non-native ears, whole isn't proper there, but I'm not sure.

No, we don't use that sentence very often.  The only situation I could think of that would make me use it i sthe following conversation:

A:  Hey, your shirt is torn!
B:  Torn? Naah!  It's not torn.  It's in fcat very much Untorn (If that's a word!)

*****************************

I was teaching my students some new adjectives and for each one I was introducing an opposite to them.  When  I came to 'torn,' I couldn't think of anything so thought I would like to ask the natives.

King Reza: How about this:

A: Hey, your shirt is torn!
B: Torn? Naah! It's not torn. In fact it's holeproof. :))

 yoyudax: untorn may technically be a word but it is in common usage

So why are using 'but' in that sentence?  I'd use 'but' if the sentence were : Untorn may technically be a word, but it's not in common usage.

Pedro Martínez:

King Reza: lol
you got me on my typo...I should have said isn't

King Reza: yeah, whole doesn't sound all that good in the sentence you wrote...
Especially since a T-shirt that was torn, has a hole, but you may still have a whole t-shirt if no cloth got detached :)

Walter Montego:I think I have to disagree that 'inexpensive' is the opposite of 'cheap.'

However, you puzzled me with your post.  I know that the prefix in makes words negative, or changes them into their opposites.  Like : Appropriate ---> Inappropriate

But I also know that sometimes, it adds more to the quality of the word instead of changing it into its opposite word.  Like: valuabe ----> Invaluabe which means very much valuable, not cheap.

So I'm not sure which one of the above is true about 'inexpensive.'

yoyudax:

King Reza: Inexpensive is less expensive, but it must get very confusing to a non native speaker, I am sure!

Why would someone say that you have a torn shirt if it was not really torn? "no, its not torn, it is ripped"? "No, it is not torn it is a shadow"? Something like that maybe, but you would not hear "no it is untorn, are you a blind idiot?"

Actually, now that I think of it, "Untorn" is NOT a word at all!!!!

King Reza: You're right Reza. I typed the sentence incorrectly. I've fixed it.
Correct or incorrect? Opposites
Flammable or inflammable? Synonyms
Go figure. :)

King Reza: Inexpensive means "not expensive". Cheap also means "not expensive", but can also mean "of poor quality". When we describe a person as cheap, we mean "stingy, reluctant to spend money".

The prefix in- means "not" in words like inexpensive, inappropriate, inconceivable, etc. Sometimes this prefix undergoes assimilation, so we get words like immaterial, impossible, illogical, irresponsible.

Valuable and invaluable have similar meanings, not because the prefix in- somehow intensifies the word, but because they are based on two different uses of the verb to value. To value can mean "to regard as having value", as in a sentence like "I value this opportunity." If we say something is valuable, we mean that it is worth a lot. But to value can also mean "to assign a value to", as in a sentence like "The stolen merchandise was valued at $3000." If we say something is invaluable, we mean that it is so precious that it is impossible to assign a value to it.

There is also another prefix in-, which comes from the Latin preposition in, meaning "in" or "into". This occurs in words like inhale, inject, intense, implicit, and inflammable. Inflammable means "capable of being inflamed".

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for untorn. It's not a word you're likely to use every day, but don't let that prejudice you against it.

KotDB: Ahh, untorn, my spell checker does not recognize it as a word!

Czuch Czuckers: And your spell-checker is of course the ultimate arbiter of what you are permitted to say?

KotDB: I guesss not! That is obviously left up the the global moderators

Czuch Czuckers: I am afraid your wrong.


And there was something else. If anything is better than having a book to read, it is having a new book, which smells of new book, and whose pages have a special, pristine feel, with shiny cover, unworn and untorn.

WatfordFC: Yeah, and the contraction you are is you're, not your.

Unworn and untorn in one clear sentence. That's a good refutation if I ever saw one. :) Even better than the new car smell, eh?

As the teacher lectures the class explaining not to use double negatives and uses various examples, the students begin to drift off in that somnolent way they have when their eyes glaze over but still continue to look in the teacher's direction. The teacher senses this and writes some examples on the chalkboard to try and see if anyone is paying attention. He also includes positives with his double negatives in an attempt to show the proper usages.
"Logically", he explains, "the use of two negatives in a sentence should make the sentence positive in meaning, but that is not how people talk when they say things like 'No, you cannot have that.' As this is never taken to mean, 'You may have that.' No one says, 'Yes, you cannot have that' or 'No, you may have that.' There is no way to have two positives have this problem and have a negative meaning as in, 'Yes, you may have that.'
From the back row a student replies, "Yeah, right."

Walter Montego:Is it a joke?

King Reza: If I could have remembered it right, it might have read a lot better. Somewhere there's a collection of usages in English that are grammatically correct, but are almost never spoken or writen. That was the point I was trying to make. In this collection the word "and" is used. Apparently, and never appears twice in a row as and and. And and is so uncommon and yet it makes perfect sense as I write here, does it not? Untorn would seem like that too, but WatfordFC has found such a simple use of it that it bears to keep in mind the rule about exceptions to the rule. You'd think that as rare as and and is that three ands in a row could not happen in a sentence and have that sentence make sense, right? Consider the two cases of and and and and and and. And and and and and and might be extreme examples of this, but they do exist. Does anyone know of this collection? I'm sure it'd be of some interest to this discussion board. :)

Walter Montego: I know , its a bad habit of mine typing your instead of you're. I apologise

hacete dar por un burro

Anyone know what this means in English? I'm pretty sure it is something about a donkey but I can't translate 'hacete'..

Rose: I would translate is as "Get used to be regarded as an idiot", but it's not 100%.

Pedro Martínez: WOW harsh thing to say wasn't it? LOL specially from someone who LOST their game! LOL Thanks Pedro.

"I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but, I'm not so sure you realize that what you heard, is not what I meant."~ Jerry Lewis, American comedian.

:)

瀬人様: well "ya" over here is slang for you

WatfordFC:And here it's a word meaning OR.

.- -. --- - .... . .-. / -.-. --- --- .-.. / --- -. .-.. .. -. . / - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - --- .-. / -.-. .- -. / -... . / ..-. --- ..- -. -.. / .- -

http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html

ustjay orfay unfay
http://www.snowcrest.net/donnelly/piglatin.html

Cinsidering the fact that many verbs in English are irregular and many words are made plural in ways other than adding 's' or 'es' to them, I was wondering if it ever happens that the natives make mistakes too.  For example children.  Has any native ever noticed a child say 'goed' for example, instead of went, etc. ?

King Reza: Yes, young children often make such mistakes. And it's not always a regular form that is used in place of the correct irregular form. When I was in grade school, some of the other children used to use "brang" rather than "brought" as the past tense of "bring", following the pattern of ring, rang, rung; sing, sang, sung; sink, sank, sunk; etc.

KotDB:I think if one understands how exactly the native children get to know their new knowledge of the language, one is able to learn the language just as well.

To me 'custom' is a very obsurb word. It has a few different meanings in the English language

1. practice followed by people of a particular group or region.
2. Duties or taxes imposed on imported and, less commonly, exported goods.
3.Made to order.

Then if you make the word 'customer'
a person or business that purchases a commodity or service

English is a very difficult language to master I would think.

Rose: Well, no language is easy to master but trust me, English is one of the least difficult ones.

I think having one word for a number of different meanings is a good thing for somebody who wants to learn the language. Imagine if you wanted to learn Czech. In your example, the 1 would be "zvyk", "zvyklost" or "obyčej" (depending on circumstances), 2 would be "clo" and 3 "zakázka". Plus there are more meanings of 'custom'. It can be a noun or an adjective. And all these have different words in Czech and in other languages.

Rose:That's true that English is tough to master, but not very difficult to learn to speak and understand to a great extent.  Pedro knows hoe tough Farsi, my language, can really get considering the fact that we do not write down the short vowels!  So in a word, all you see is the consonants and long vowels while depending on how short vowels are changed, many words are produced which are written exactly the same in farsi.

ببر

is a very good example.  It can be read:  Bebar, Bebor, Babr meaning "take, cut, tiger" respectively.  I can imagine how confused a non-native may get when he/she comes acroos this word in a text.

King Reza: That's exactly the biggest problem I have with Farsi. I don't know if you agree with me or not, but I think that while you can make yourself well understood in English after, say, 1 year of every-day studying (maybe less), it takes a considerably longer time to do so in Farsi.