:
This article deals with the general meaning of the term "synonym". For biological synonyms, see Synonym (taxonomy).Synonyms are different words (or sometimes phrases) with identical or very similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be
synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called
synonymy. The word comes from
Ancient Greek syn () ("with") and
onoma () ("name"). The words
car and
automobile are synonyms. Similarly, if we talk about a
long time or an
extended time,
long and
extended become synonyms. In the figurative sense, two words are often said to be synonymous if they have the same connotation:
Synonyms can be any
part of speech (e.g.
nouns,
verbs,
adjectives,
adverbs or
prepositions), as long as both members of the pair are the same part of speech. More examples of English synonyms are:
- petty crime and misdemeanor (noun)
- quickly and speedily (adverb)
- on and upon (preposition)
Note that synonyms are defined with respect to certain senses of words; for instance,
pupil as the
"aperture in the iris of the eye" is not synonymous with
student. Similarly,
he expired means the same as
he died, yet
my passport has expired cannot be replaced by
my passport has died.
In English many synonyms evolved from a mixture of Norman French and English words, often with some words associated with the Saxon countryside (
"folk",
"freedom") and synonyms with the Norman nobility (
"people",
"liberty").
Some
lexicographers claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) because
etymology,
orthography,
phonic qualities, ambiguous meanings, usage, etc. make them unique. Different words that are similar in meaning usually differ for a reason:
feline is more formal than
cat;
long and
extended are only synonyms in one usage and not in others (for example, a
long arm is not the same as an
extended arm). Synonyms are also a source of
euphemisms.
The purpose of a
thesaurus is to offer the user a listing of similar or related words; these are often, but not always, synonyms.
Related terms
Antonyms are words with opposite or nearly opposite meanings. For example:
The words
synonym and
antonym are themselves antonyms.
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 of
car, and
car is a hyponym of
vehicle.
Homonyms are words that sound or are spelled the same, but have different meanings.
See also
