Sources of synonymy

1) Borrowing from other languages. Borrowing is the most powerful and significant source of synonymy in English words. English is rich in synonymic pairs and groups which consist of words that can be traced to different languages such as Latin, Greek, French, Scandinavian. The native synonym is, as a rule, more general in its denotational meaning, stylistically neutral, possessing no specific connotations and on the whole more commonly and frequently used in speech. Its synonyms of Latin, Greek or French origin are often stylistically marked and refer to bookish layer (some of them are even learned words or terms). Such synonymic rows make double-scaled or triple-scaled patterns:

work (native) – labour (French)

to rise – to mount (French) – to ascend (Latin)

to ask (native) – to question (French) – to interrogate (Latin)

to end (native) – to finish (French) – to complete (Latin).

2) Borrowings from different dialects and variants of the English language. Especially large is the group of American synonyms, e.g. underground – subway, flat – apartment, money – buck, autumn – fall.

3) Semantic changes in English words (see Chapter 2 Unit 4).

4) Various ways and means of word-building (affixation, prefixation, suffixation, conversion, compounding, clipping, etc.), e.g. righteous – rightful, trader – tradesman, doctor – doc, laboratory – lab.

5) Set expressions consisting of a verb with a postpositive are widely used in present day English: to choose – pick out, abandon – give up, postpone – put off, return – come back, quarrel – fall out.

6) Euphemism, e.g. the euphemistic expression merry coincides in denotation with the word drunk it substituted but the connotation of the word merry faded out and so the utterance on the whole is milder and less offensive. Very often a learned word which sounds less familiar and less offensive or derogative is used, for example, drunkenness – intoxication, sweat – perspiration (cf. Russian terms экспроприация – раскулачивание). The effect is achieved because the periphrastic expression is not so harsh, sometimes jocular: poor – underprivileged; lodger – paying guest.

Antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same language belonging to the same part of speech and to the same semantic field, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution, associated and often used together so that their denotative meanings render contradictory or contrary notions, e.g. poor – rich, to exclude – to include, warm – cold.

A polysemantic word can have one or more antonyms for each of its lexico-semantic variants, for example, 1. dull:: interesting, amusing, entertaining;2. dull:: clever, bright, capable;3. dull:: active.

Antonyms can be classified according to the part of speech they belong to into substantive warmth – coldness, adjectival kind – wicked, verbal to rise – to fall and adverbial ones high – low.

Most antonyms are adjectives which is natural as qualitative features can be easily compared and opposed, for example, wide:: narrow, high:: low, strong:: weak, old:: young. Verbal antonyms are less in number: to lose:: to find, to live:: to die, to open:: to close. Substantive antonyms are even less in number: friend:: enemy, joy:: grief, good:: evil, love:: hatred. Antonymic adverbs fall into two groups: adverbs formed from corresponding adjectives, for example, warmly:: coldly, merrily:: sadly, loudly:: quietly, and adverbs proper, for example, now:: then, here:: there, ever:: never, up:: down, in:: out.

Another classification of antonyms is a morphological one:

1) root (absolute) antonyms – are antonyms having different roots: e.g. good – bad, beautiful – ugly, kind – cruel, old – young, right:: wrong, day – night, rich – poor, failure – success, dwarf – gigantic;

2) derivational antonyms – are antonyms having the same root but different affixes, e.g. happy – unhappy, kind – unkind, to like – to dislike, possible – impossible, regular – irregular, to do – to undo.