Synonyms are different words with almost identical or 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:

"a widespread impression that … Hollywood was synonymous with immorality" (Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer and historian, and an oft-seen political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S...

)

Synonyms can be any part of speech (e.g. noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s, verbs, adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s, adverb

Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

s or prepositions), as long as both members of the pair are the same part of speech. More examples of English synonyms are:

• noun
  • "testicles" and "gonads"
• verb
  • "buy" and "purchase"
• adjective
  • "sick" and "ill"
• adverb
  • "quickly" and "speedily"
• preposition
  • "on" and "upon"

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 the parallel use, in the early medieval period, of Norman French (from Latin) and Old English (Anglo-Saxon) words, often with some words being used principally by the Saxon peasantry ("folk", "freedom", "bowman") and their synonyms by the Norman nobility ("people", "liberty", "archer").

Some lexicographers claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) because etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

, orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

, phonic

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 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 euphemism

Euphemism

A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...

s.

The purpose of a thesaurus

Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...

 is to offer the user a listing of similar or related words; these are often, but not always, synonyms. (Rooted derivatives are not synonymous, such as: to force —- forcing)

Related terms

Antonym

Antonym

In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not...

s are words with opposite or nearly opposite meanings. For example:

• short and tall
• dead and alive
• increase and decrease
• add and subtract

Hypernym

Hypernym

In linguistics, a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hypernym . In simpler terms, a hyponym shares a type-of relationship with its hypernym...

s 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.

Homonym

Homonym

In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...

s are words that sound AND are spelled the same, but have different meanings.

See also

• -onym
  -onym
  The suffix onym, in English and other languages, means "word, name," and words ending in onym refer to a specified kind of name or word, most of which are classical compounds. For example, an acronym is a word formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts...
  
  
• Synonym ring
  Synonym ring
  In metadata a synonym ring or synset, is a group of data elements that are considered semantically equivalent for the purposes of information retrieval. These data elements are frequently found in different metadata registries...
  
  
• Thesaurus
  Thesaurus
  A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...
  
  
• Cognitive synonymy
  Cognitive synonymy
  Cognitive synonymy is a property of words or terms distinguished from similarity of mental associations, connotations, emotive responses, and poetic value; it is the information that a word or term expresses such that it is synonymous with a different word's cognitive meaning...
  
  
• Antonym
  Antonym
  In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not...
  
  
• Homonym
  Homonym
  In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
  
  s, identical or very similar words with different meanings (conceptual inversion of "synonym")

External links

• Graph Words - Online tool for visualization word relations
• Synonym Finder - Synonym finder including hypernyms in search result.
• how to say - Online Synonym finder
• Synonym.com - Synonyms Thesaurus with Antonyms & Definitions
• Thesaurus - Online synonyms in English, Italian, French and German.
• Woxikon Synonyms - Over 1 million synonyms - English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Dutch
• Free Online English Thesaurus and Dictionary. Free Online English Thesaurus and dictionary containing synonyms, related Words, antonyms, definitions, idioms, words and terms using Merriam Websters Thesaurus, Wordnet Reference and Roget's Thesaurus Definitions.
• English Synonym Dictionary - offers 500 searches for synonym per user per day
• iGoogle Gadget - Synonym Gadget for iGoogle