Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language.
- noun A word or expression that serves as a figurative or symbolic substitute for another.
- noun Biology One of two or more scientific names that have been applied to the same species or other taxonomic group.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A word having the same signification as another; one of two or more words which have the same meaning; by extension, a word having nearly the same meaning as another; one of two or more words which in use cover to a considerable extent the same ground: the opposite of
antonym . - noun A word of one language which corresponds in meaning with a word in another language. See
heteronym , 2, paronym, 2, and the quotation from Camden under synonymize. - noun In natural history, a systematic name having the same, or approximately the same, meaning or application as another which has superseded it; a technical name which, by the rules of nomenclature, is not tenable.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One of two or more words (commonly words of the same language) which are equivalents of each other; one of two or more words which have very nearly the same signification, and therefore may often be used interchangeably. See under
synonymous . - noun An incorrect or incorrectly applied scientific name, as a new name applied to a species or genus already properly named, or a specific name preoccupied by that of another species of the same genus; -- so used in the system of nomenclature (which see) in which the correct scientific names of certain natural groups (usually genera, species, and subspecies) are regarded as determined by priority.
- noun Rare One of two or more words corresponding in meaning but of different languages; a heteronym.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun semantics, with respect to a given word or phrase A
word orphrase with ameaning that is the same as, or very similar to, another word or phrase. - noun zoology, with respect to a name for a given taxon Any of the formal names for the taxon, including the valid name (i.e. the
senior synonym ). - noun botany, with respect to a name for a given taxon Any name for the taxon, usually a validly published, formally accepted one, but often also an unpublished name.
- noun databases An alternative (often shorter)
name defined for anobject in adatabase .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun two words that can be interchanged in a context are said to be synonymous relative to that context
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In a previous column, cleared by copy editors and other arbiters of editorial taste after great hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing, we explored the penile and ornamental origins of the German-Yiddish schmuck, which has lost its taboo and is now a slang synonym for jerk, nerd, dork and creep.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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In a previous column, cleared by copy editors and other arbiters of editorial taste after great hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing, we explored the penile and ornamental origins of the German-Yiddish schmuck, which has lost its taboo and is now a slang synonym for jerk, nerd, dork and creep.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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In a previous column, cleared by copy editors and other arbiters of editorial taste after great hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing, we explored the penile and ornamental origins of the German-Yiddish schmuck, which has lost its taboo and is now a slang synonym for jerk, nerd, dork and creep.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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In a previous column, cleared by copy editors and other arbiters of editorial taste after great hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing, we explored the penile and ornamental origins of the German-Yiddish schmuck, which has lost its taboo and is now a slang synonym for jerk, nerd, dork and creep.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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Another synonym is "maison de tolérance" (house of tolerance) and the humor is not lost on me as I go about putting together this unexpected edition ...
Braise The Dog 2009
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Around 1960, it became a slang synonym for any kind of failure, "we cratered."
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Maybe we could mix it up with your tag synonym service too?
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While the zoot suit eventually attained widespread popularity in the mainstream, it also became a pejorative synonym for "Mexican" on the West Coast as some Americans took umbrage at so many able-bodied young men who were not "helping to win the war."
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While toilet and lavatory have discarded their original meanings, terms such as bog retained their original meanings (` a marshy place ') as well as being understood in Britain as a slang synonym for a toilet; it achieved an entry in Hotten's dictionary as early as 1864 as "a privy as distinguished from a water-closet."
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Among the relatively new slang words: stella, "good-looking female," from stellar, "starlike, " improbably influenced by the shouted name of Stanley Kowalski's wife in Tennessee Williams's "Streetcar Named Desire." A synonym is shorty or shawty, imported from vintage hip-hop for "girlfriend of any height." Such attractiveness is the opposite of the fast-fading butterface ("Great body, but her face .... "), and a less-than-good-looking male or female is a blockamore, who "only looks good from a block or more."
vanishedone commented on the word synonym
A lowercase word that weirdly never existed on Wordie Classic; see Synonym.
November 18, 2009
Prolagus commented on the word synonym
Uh, I came here to write the same thing :)
November 30, 2009
jmjarmstrong commented on the word synonym
JM wonders if there is another word for synonym.
July 17, 2011
NUTZFORdBUCKS commented on the word synonym
Just because it is a synonym, does not mean it connotes the same meaning.
February 13, 2012