ABSTRACT
Words and their meanings e relationships between the meanings of words can be dierentiated and categorised. Synonymy, for example, refers to the ideal state in which a word means exactly the same as another. is can be said to be idealised because in practice there are probably no true exact synonyms, since the connotations and associations of the two words are likely to be slightly dierent. For example, ‘book, volume, text, tome’ might all be said to be synonymous, but it is easy to see that they have specic and dierent normal contexts of use. A ‘text’ sounds more like a book for teaching or analysis, a ‘volume’ is grander than a book, but not as grand as a ‘tome’, which also has the suggestion that it might be a boring but worthy read. Other sets of synonyms display similar variations: ‘letter, epistle, note, line’, or ‘clothes, gear, clobber, kit, threads, couture’, or ‘car, wheels, banger, automobile, motor’, or ‘dog, doggie, pup, mutt, canine, hound’, and so on.
