That’s why I dismissed them as arbitrary, I couldn’t envisage something as objectively hot, or objectively cold, they are relative states. Wet and dry seemed to have more promise, but again is wet an objective state? Moist damp etc…
We might have more to mull over with alive and dead? How about known and unknown?
A negation is exactly what I was going for.
The situation of you owing me 1 dollar, and I owing you 1 dollar; is the same situation as when you and I don’t owe each other money. The two debits negate each other, because they are opposites.
What is it missing to be both?
Opposite(s), money, and number are also concepts. If we want to rule out concepts, we can just rule out opposites and be done with this.
Alive and dead…ahem…
My brain hurts with the points above. When I use “opposite” or think “opposite” it is a descriptor for “diametrically different; of a contrary kind.” (definition).
When I want to find a material object in a room (at night) - turning on the light creates a different material “atmosphere of photons” where they were once lacking.
Well there we go, there are no opposites…that was easy 
I don’t think alive or dead are abstract ideas? Wouldn’t they be opposites?
Yes yes…we are getting to you…Now, how do you define alive? Without using the word “alive” how do you define dead?
Edit to check pulse
Uh, that’s all well and good Mr Rumsfeld, but you’re dead…so there’s that.
A good quote is a good quote, and it survives its (supposed) originator. That’s why we still say veni vidi vici.
This discussion is a little above my pay grade, I only took one year of physics in high school. Can people be opposites, we are physical “things” aren’t we?
Or is it just a different perspective?
Indeed…I also would like to question the origin, but frankly D.R. was my first source. It has served me well many times.
Sheldon poses an interesting problem though. A dollar is both symbolic or conceptual and real. I suppose if the currency changed overnight, and I then happened to have some worthless dollars. Paying Sheldon a dollar would not satisfy him. What he really wants is the value of a dollar. Something equal to the value of a dollar and not the actual dollar.
What’s the opposite of bat? It’s easy enough to answer that. A bat sleeps upside down in trees, Whereas a horse, with equal ease, Can sleep while upright in his stall. Another answer might be ball.
NOW HERE IS FOOD FOR THOUGHT
“Wilbur did not write an opposite for Life and Death because he knew what Yeats’s airman knew: the true opposite of real Life is not Death; it is false life, life that refuses to accept the reality of death, and therefore is not life at all.”
Well, probably not life at all, but a much lesser version of it on a scale from A to Z.
Ah, only “real” when in one’s possession…when discussing the dollar I owe you, keep in mind it is purely symbolic, so I will symbolically pay you the dollar and we’ll be square?
We could have opposite momentum, or electric charge.
Are we physical? Are you your arm? If I take away your arm, a physical part of you, do you stop being you? How much of your can I take away before you stop being you. Could you not be a brain in a vat only imagining that you are you? Am I the cells, the organs, the fluids that merge and make this thing? It seems I am an emergent property, a process, and not really a thing. Ahh… now we have a mind body problem. Am I mind or body or both? LOL Is body the opposite of mind? 75% of the body is inorganic material: (It is already dead. As dead as a rock.) What is the living part? Is the living part opposite the dead part? I don’t have any answers. I’m just walking along looking at all the pretty flowers. So far, my favorite flower is:
"
Or more succinctly.
That already happened of sorts in the EU, with the transition from lots of individual membership countries’ currencies to the Euro (EUR, €). Although the transition didn’t happen overnight (it was a carefully planned process), the old currencies and the euro were all legal tender in a transition period. And all prices had to be marked in both the old national currencies and in EUR.
What about the old saying “opposites attract”, is this something for another/different conversation?
Maybe not philosophical enough?