SYNONYMS
- Synonyms are words that are nearest in meaning.
- A word that serves as a synonym to headwords is a noun, adjective, verb, or adverb.
- A synonym is a word, or in some cases, a phrase that has the same meaning as another word with regards to the same language.
- If the meaning is not exactly the same, the words have very similar meanings in the context.
- When two words are synonyms of one another, we call them ‘synonymous words’
- Using ‘jump’ as an example, the words ‘leap’, ‘bounce’, ‘hop’ are all synonymous to ‘jump’, i.e. they have the same (or very similar) meanings.
ANTONYMS
- Now as opposed to a synonym, an antonym is a word whose meaning is exactly opposite to another word in the same language.
- It originates from the Greek word ‘anti’, which stands for opposite and ‘onym’, which stands for ‘name’.
- For example: the antonym for ‘hot’ is ‘cold’, and the antonym for ‘up’ is ‘down’
- Antonyms are actually quite useful in the English language.
- At times, it is easy to understand the meaning and the context of a difficult word, by knowing what the opposite of the word means.
- For example: ‘mundane’, whose synonym is ‘humdrum’. The antonym for mundane is ‘extraordinary’ or ‘imaginative’; now, the word ‘mundane’ has a much better clarity.
Examples of Synonyms and Antonyms