Antonyms
People sometimes object to using the prefix mal- to derive highly frequent antonyms, especially when they're as long as malproksima (far). There are a few alternative roots in poetry, such as turpa for malbela (ugly) and pigra for mallaborema (lazy) – some of which originated in Ido, – that find their way into prose. However, they are rarely used in conversation. This is a combination of two factors: the great ease and familiarity of using the mal- prefix, and the relative obscurity of most of the alternatives, which would hamper communication. This results in English borrowings – such as ĉipa (cheap) for malmultekosta (inexpensive) – failing to find favor even among native English speakers.
Two root antonyms are frequently encountered: eta (little), and dura (hard ). However, their popularity is due to their iconicity. Eta is derived from the diminutive suffix and more properly means slight, but it's a little word, and its use for malgranda (little) is quite common. The reason for the popularity of dura is similar: official malmola simply sounds too soft to mean "hard".
Other antonymic words tend to have a different scope. For example, instead of malbona (bad) we may see aĉa (of poor quality) or fia (shameful), but these are not strict antonyms.
Read more about this topic: Esperanto Vocabulary