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Anti-elementarity is a strong way of ensuring that a class of structures , in a given first-order language, is not closed under elementary equivalence with respect to any infinitary language of the form L $\infty$$\lambda$. We prove that many naturally defined classes are anti-elementary, including the following: $\bullet$ the class of all lattices of finitely generated convex {\ell}-subgroups of members of any class of {\ell}-groups containing all Archimedean {\ell}-groups; $\bullet$ the class of all semilattices of finitely generated {\ell}-ideals of members of any nontrivial quasivariety of {\ell}-groups; $\bullet$ the class of all Stone duals of spectra of MV-algebras-this yields a negative solution for the MV-spectrum Problem; $\bullet$ the class of all semilattices of finitely generated two-sided ideals of rings; $\bullet$ the class of all semilattices of finitely generated submodules of modules; $\bullet$ the class of all monoids encoding the nonstable $K_0$-theory of von Neumann regular rings, respectively C*-algebras of real rank zero; $\bullet$ (assuming arbitrarily large Erd"os cardinals) the class of all coordinatizable sectionally complemented modular lattices with a large 4-frame. The main underlying principle is that under quite general conditions, for a functor $\Phi$ : A $\rightarrow$ B, if there exists a non-commutative diagram D of A, indexed by a common sort of poset called an almost join-semilattice, such that $\bullet$ $\Phi$ D^I is a commutative diagram for every set I, $\bullet$ $\Phi$ D is not isomorphic to $\Phi$ X for any commutative diagram X in A, then the range of $\Phi$ is anti-elementary., Comment: 49 pages. Journal of Mathematical Logic, World Scientific Publishing, In press