Asynonym is aword,morpheme, orphrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language.[2] For example, in theEnglish language, the wordsbegin,start,commence, andinitiate are all synonyms of one another: they aresynonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning.
Words may often be synonymous in only one particularsense: for example,long andextended in thecontextlong time orextended time are synonymous, butlong cannot be used in the phraseextended family.
Synonyms with exactly the same meaning share aseme or denotationalsememe, whereas those with inexactly similar meanings share a broader denotational orconnotational sememe and thus overlap within asemantic field. The former are sometimes calledcognitive synonyms and the latter, near-synonyms,[3] plesionyms[4] or poecilonyms.[5]
Somelexicographers claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) becauseetymology,orthography, phonic qualities,connotations, ambiguous meanings,usage, and so on make them unique.[6] Different words that are similar in meaning usually differ for a reason:feline is more formal thancat;long andextended are only synonyms in one usage and not in others (for example, along arm is not the same as anextended arm). Synonyms are also a source ofeuphemisms.
Metonymy can sometimes be a form of synonymy:theWhite House is used as a synonym ofthe administration in referring to theU.S. executive branch under a specific president.[7] Thus, a metonym is a type of synonym, and the wordmetonym is ahyponym of the wordsynonym.[citation needed]
The word is borrowed fromLatinsynōnymum, in turn borrowed fromAncient Greeksynōnymon (συνώνυμον), composed ofsýn (σύν 'together, similar, alike') and-ōnym- (-ωνυμ-), a form ofonoma (ὄνομα 'name').[10]
Loanwords are another rich source of synonyms, often from the language of the dominant culture of a region. Thus, most European languages have borrowed from Latin and ancient Greek, especially for technical terms, but the native terms continue to be used in non-technical contexts. InEast Asia, borrowings fromChinese inJapanese,Korean, andVietnamese often double native terms. In Islamic cultures,Arabic andPersian are large sources of synonymous borrowings.
For example, inTurkish,kara andsiyah both mean 'black', the former being a native Turkish word, and the latter being a borrowing from Persian. InOttoman Turkish, there were often three synonyms: water can besu (Turkish),âb (Persian), ormâ (Arabic): "such a triad of synonyms exists in Ottoman for every meaning, without exception". As always with synonyms, there are nuances and shades of meaning or usage.[12]
In English, similarly, there often exist Latin (L) and Greek (Gk) terms synonymous with Germanic ones:thought,notion (L),idea (Gk);ring,circle (L),cycle (Gk). English often uses the Germanic term only as a noun, but has Latin and Greek adjectives:hand,manual (L),chiral (Gk);heat,thermal (L),caloric (Gk). Sometimes the Germanic term has become rare, or restricted to special meanings:tide,time/temporal,chronic.[13]
Manybound morphemes in English are borrowed from Latin and Greek and are synonyms for native words or morphemes:fish,pisci- (L),ichthy- (Gk).
Another source of synonyms iscoinages, which may be motivated bylinguistic purism. Thus, the English wordforeword was coined to replace the Romancepreface. In Turkish,okul was coined to replace the Arabic-derivedmektep andmederese, but those words continue to be used in some contexts.[14]
Synonyms often express a nuance of meaning or are used in differentregisters of speech or writing.
Various technical domains may employ synonyms to convey precise technical nuances.
Some writers avoid repeating the same word in close proximity, and prefer to use synonyms: this is calledelegant variation. Many modern style guides criticize this.
Synonyms can be anypart of speech, as long as both words belong to the same part of speech. Examples:
noun:drink andbeverage
verb:buy andpurchase
adjective:big andlarge
adverb:quickly andspeedily
preposition:on andupon
Synonyms are defined with respect to certain senses of words:pupil as theaperture in the iris of the eye is not synonymous withstudent. Similarly,he expired means the same ashe died, yetmy passport has expired cannot be replaced bymy passport has died.
The wordpoecilonym is a rare synonym of the wordsynonym. It is not entered in most major dictionaries and is a curiosity or piece of trivia for being anautological word because of itsmeta quality as a synonym ofsynonym.
Antonyms are words with opposite or nearly opposite meanings. For example:hot ↔cold,large ↔small,thick ↔thin,synonym ↔antonym
Hypernyms and hyponyms are words that refer to, respectively, a general category and a specific instance of that category. For example,vehicle is a hypernym ofcar, andcar is a hyponym ofvehicle.
Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings. For example,witch andwhich are homophones in most accents (because they are pronounced the same).
Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings. For example, one canrecord a song or keep arecord of documents.
Homonyms are words that have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings. For example,rose (a type of flower) androse (past tense ofrise) are homonyms.
^DiMarco, Chrysanne, and Graeme Hirst. "Usage notes as the basis for a representation of near-synonymy for lexical choice." Proceedings of 9th annual conference of the University of Waterloo Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary and Text Research. 1993.
^Grambs, David. The Endangered English Dictionary: Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot. WW Norton & Company, 1997.
^"In the strictest sense,synonymous words scarcely exist".Standard Dictionary (Funk & Wagnalls, 1894), entry forsynonyms orsynonymous, as quoted inWebster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam (Merriam-Webster ser.), [4th ed.] 1973 (SBN 0-87779-141-4)), p. 19a (Survey of the History of English Synonymy, inIntroductory Matter);accord,Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms,id., pp. 23a–25a,passim (Synonym: Analysis and Definition (titular word & colon italicized in original & subtitle not), inIntroductory Matter).
