Курс лекций по лексикологии английского языка для студентов факультетов иностранных языков

synonyms denote different shades of meaning or different degrees of a given quality. 
They are nearly identical in one or more denotational meanings and interchangeable 
at least in some contexts, e.g. beautiful - fine - handsome -pretty Beautiful conveys, 
for instance, the strongest meaning; it marks the possession of that quality in its 
fullest extent, while the other terms denote the possession of it in part only. Fineness, 
handsomeness and prettiness are to beauty as parts to a whole. 
In the synonymic group choose, select, opt, elect, pick the word choose has the 
most general meaning, the others are characterised by differences clearly statable: 
select implies a wide choice of possibilities (select a Christmas present for a child), 
opt implies an alternative (either this, or that as in Fewer students are opting for 
science courses nowadays); pick often implies collecting and keeping for future use 
(pick new words), elect implies choosing by vote (elect a president; elect smb (to be) 
chairman). 
Stylistic synonyms differ not so much in denotational as in emotive value or 
stylistic sphere of application. 
Literary language often uses poetic words, archaisms as stylistic alternatives of 
neutral words, e.g. maid for girl, bliss for happiness, steed for horse, quit for leave. 
Calling and vocation in the synonymic group occupation, calling, vocation, 
business are high-flown as compared to occupation and business. 
In many cases a stylistic synonym has an element of elevation in its meaning, 
e.g. face - visage, girl - maiden. Along with elevation of meaning there is the reverse 
process of degradation: to begin - to fire away, to eat - to devour, to steal - to pinch, 
face - muzzle. According to the criterion of interchangeability in context synonyms 
are classified into total, relative and contextual. 
Total synonyms are those members of a synonymic group which can replace 
each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative meaning 
or emotional meaning and connotations. They are very rare. Examples can be found 
mostly in special literature among technical terms and others, e.g. fatherland - 

motherland, suslik - gopher, noun - substantive, functional affix - flection, inflection, 
scarlet fever - scarlatina
Relative Synonyms. Some authors class groups like ask - beg - implore, or like 
- love - adore, gift -talent - genius, famous - celebrated- eminent as relative 
synonyms, as they denote different degree of the same notion or different shades of 
meanings and can be substituted only in some contexts. 
Contextual or context - dependent synonyms are similar in meaning only under 
some specific distributional conditions. It may happen that the difference between the 
meanings of two words is contextually neutralised , E.g. buy and get would not 
generally be taken as synonymous, but they are synonyms in the following examples: 
I'll go to the shop and buy some bread. 
I'll go to the shop and get some bread. 
The verbs bear, suffer, stand are semantically different and not interchangeable 
except when used in the negative form: I can't stand it, I can't bear it. 
One of the sources of synonymy is borrowing. Synonymy has its characteristic 
patterns in each language. Its peculiar feature in English is the contrast between 
simple native words stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and 
learned words of Greco-Latin origin. 
Native English: to ask, to end, to rise, teaching, belly. 
French Borrowings: to question, to finish, to mount, guidance, stomach. 
Latin borrowings: to interrogate, to complete, to ascend, instruction, abdomen. 
There are also words that came from dialects, in the last hundred years, from 
American English, in particular, e.g. long distance call AE - trunk call BE, radio AE - 
wireless BE. 

Synonyms are also created by means of all word - forming processes productive 
in the language. 
Synonymic differentiation. It must be noted that synonyms may influence each 
other semantically in two diametrically opposite ways: one of them is dissimilation or 
differentiation, the other is the reverse process , i.e. assimilation. 
Many words now marked in the dictionaries as "archaic" or "obsolete" have 
dropped out of the language in the competition of synonyms, others survived with a 
meaning more or less different from the original one. This process is called 
synonymic differentiation and is so current that is regarded as an inherent law of 
language development. 
The development of the synonymic group land has been studied by A.A. 
Ufimtseva. When in the 13 century soil was borrowed from French into English its 
meaning was "a strip of land". OE synonyms eorpe, land, folde ment "the upper layer 
of earth in which plants grow". Now, if two words coincide in meaning and use, the 
tendency is for one of them to drop out of the language. Folde became identical to 
eorpe and in the fight for survival the letter won. The polysemantic word land 
underwent an intense semantic development in a different direction and so dropped 
out of this synonymic series. It was natural for soil to fill this lexical gap and become 
the main name for the notion "the mould in which plants grow". The noun earth 
retained this meaning throughout its history whereas the word ground, in which this 
meaning was formerly absent, developed it. As a result this synonymic group 
comprises at present soil, earth, ground. 
The assimilation of synonyms consists in parallel development. This law was 
discovered and described by G. Stern, H.A. Treble and G.H. Vallins in their book "An 
ABC of English Usage", Oxford, 1957, p. 173 give as examples the pejorative 
meanings acquired by the nouns wench, knave and churl which originally ment "girl", 
"boy", and "labourer" respectively, and point out that this loss of old dignity became 

linguistically possible because there were so many synonymous words of similar 
meaning. As the result all the three words underwent degradation in their meanings: 
wench - indecent girl knave - rascal churl - country man.

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