A synonym is one of two or more words in the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning as another word, where the equivalence is established by linguistic convention rather than by identity of referent. A synonym pair shares semantic content while differing in phonological form and orthographic representation; the relation holds within a language at a given time and may vary across dialects, registers, or historical periods. The persistence mechanism is social convention encoded in dictionaries, usage in written and spoken communication, and linguistic teaching. [formal: synonymum | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
synonym
A synonym is one of two or more words in the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning as another word, where the equivalence is established by linguistic convention rather than by identity of referent. A synonym pair sha…
Definition
Why it is in scope
one of two or more words in a language that share the same or nearly the same meaning as another word in that language, distinguished by linguistic convention and recorded in dictionaries; a relation between lexical items, not the referents they name
Names and aliases
- synonymen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmr784qq1000ks126wltnuaxhDEPENDS_ON →
Removal test (Law 8): remove language and synonym ceases to operate — there is no shared linguistic system to host the relation of two forms having one meaning. The concept of synonymy is constitutively bound to a language; it doesn't work without one. This is a constitutive dependency, not merely sayable.
- cms7jh88z01oga34c4xd83pxeINSTANCE_OF →
Synonymy is a specific kind of semantic relation — the relation between words with similar meanings. Law 9: the specific (synonym) points at the general (semantic-relation). A competent speaker would call synonym 'a semantic relation'.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 29, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 30a7876a26fe59a1f812e7536fbcc0258799e1ff8e9b72bf031b45f5f9cec9fa