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history, a systematic name having the same, or approximately the same, meaning or application as another which has superseded it; a technical name which, by the rules of nomenclature, is not tenable.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 , 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a name for a given taxon Any name for the taxon, usually a validly published, formally accepted one, but often also an unpublished name.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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Another synonym is "maison de tolérance" (house of tolerance) and the humor is not 🐭lost on me as I g🐠o about putting together this unexpected edition ...
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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 manyಞ 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 toဣilet; it achi💎eved 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 is꧒ 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