In considering pairs we have, without using the word, been studying
synonyms. For most pairs are synonyms (or in some instances antonyms) that
hunt in couples. We must now deal with synonyms, and incidentally
antonyms, as they associate themselves in larger groups.
A vocabulary is impoverished. Why? Nine times in ten, because of a
disregard of synonyms. Listen to the talk of the average person. Whatever
is pleasing is _fine_ or _nice_ or _all to the good_;
whatever is displeasing is _bum_ or _awful_ or _a fright_.
Life is reflected, not as noble and complex, but as mean and meager. Out
of such stereotyped utterance only the general idea emerges. The precise
meaning is lazily or incompetently left to the hearer to imagine. The
precise meaning? There is none. A person who does not take the trouble to
speak clearly has not taken the trouble to think clearly.
But the master of synonyms expresses, instead of general, hazy,
commonplace conceptions, the subtlest shadings of thought and feeling. He
has so trained himself that he selects, it may be unconsciously, from a
throng of possible words. One word may be strong, another weak. One may be
broad, another narrow. One may present an alternative in meanings, another
permit no liberty of choice. One may be suggestive, another literal or
colorless. One may penetrate to the core of the idea, another strike only
in the environs. With these possibilities the master of synonyms reckons.
He must have the right word. He chooses it, not at haphazard, but in
conformity with a definite purpose.
For synonyms are not words that have the same meaning. They are words that
have similar meanings. They may be compared to circles that overlap but do
not coincide. Each embraces a common area, but each embraces also an area
peculiar to itself. Though many words cluster about a given idea, rarely
if ever are even two of these words entirely equivalent to each other. In
scope, in suggestion, in emotional nuance, in special usage, or what not,
is sure to lurk some denial of perfect correspondence. And of synonyms, so
of antonyms. Antonyms are words opposite in meaning; but the opposition,
for the same reasons as the likeness, is seldom or never absolute.
In your study of synonyms you will find most of the dictionaries
previously named of great help. You may also profitably consult the
following books of synonyms (heavy, scholastic works not suited for
ordinary use are omitted):
<Books of Plain Synonyms and Antonyms>
Edith B. Ordway: _Synonyms and Antonyms_. A compact, practical
volume, with antonyms (in italics for contrast) immediately following
synonyms.
Louis A. Flemming: _Putnam's Word Book_. A book of the ordinarily
used synonyms of words, with antonyms after some of them, and with lists
of associated words wherever these are likely to be useful.
Samuel Fallows: _100,000 Synonyms and Antonyms_. A handy little
volume, with useful lists of various kinds in appendices.
Richard Soule: _Dictionary of English Synonyms_ [revised and enlarged
by George H. Howison]. A much larger and more expensive book than the
others, and less practical for ordinary use, but fuller in treatment of
material, with words of more than one meaning carefully divided into their
various senses.
<Synonyms with Word Discriminations>
George Crabb: _English Synonyms_. A standard volume for over 100
years. Has close distinctions, but is somewhat scholarly for ordinary use.
Revised edition of 1917, omitting illustrative quotations from literature,
not so good as editions before that date.
James C. Fernald: _English Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions_.
A pleasing book to read, with much information about the use of words and
their shades of meaning (with exercises), also with proper prepositions to
follow words. Material taken from the _Standard Dictionary_.
Peter Mark Roget: _Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases_. Issued in
many editions and revisions. Words grouped under general ideas. An
excellent book for serious and laborious study, but not for quick use.
<How to Acquire Synonyms>
The best principle for the extension of one's mastery of synonyms is the
principle already used over and over in this book--that of proceeding from
the known to the unknown. It is the fundamental principle, indeed, of any
kind of successful learning. We should build on what we have, fit each new
piece of material into the structure already erected. But normally it is
our ill fortune to learn through chance rather than through system. We
perceive elucidation here, draw an inference there. These isolated
fragments of knowledge may mislead rather than inform us.
The principle of proceeding from the known to the unknown may be applied
to synonyms in various ways. Two of these--the two of most importance--we
must consider here.
First, you should reckon with your personal, demonstrated needs. Just as
you have already analyzed your working vocabulary for its general limits
and shortcomings, so should you analyze it with particular reference to
your poverty in synonyms. Watch your actual speech; make a list of the
words--nouns, verbs, and adjectives particularly--that you employ again
and again. Make each of these words the starting-point for a linguistic
exploring expedition. First, write the word down. Then under it write all
the synonyms that come forthwith to your mind. These constitute your
present available stock; in speaking or writing you could, if you kept
yourself mentally alert, summon them on the moment. But the list, as you
know, is not exhaustive. Draw a line under it and subjoin such synonyms as
come to you after reflection. These constitute a second stock, not
instantaneously available, yet to be tagged as among your resources. Next
add a list of the synonyms you find through research, through a ransacking
of dictionaries and books of synonyms. This third stock, but dimly
familiar if familiar at all, is in no practical sense yours. And indeed
some of the words are too abstruse, learned, or technical for you to
burden your memory with them. But many--most--are worth acquiring. By
writing down the words of these three classes you have done something to
stamp them upon your memory as associates. You must now make it your
business to bring them into use. Never call upon them for volunteers, but
like a wise commander summon the individual that can rightly perform a
particular service. Thus will your speech, perhaps vague and indolent now,
become exact, discriminating, competent, vital.
In the second place, you should obtain specific and detailed command of
general ideas. Not of out-of-the-way ideas. But of the great basic ideas
that are the common possession of all mankind. For through these basic
ideas is the most natural and profitable approach to the study of
synonyms. Each of them is represented by a generic word. So elementary are
idea and word alike that a person cannot have the one in mind without
having the other ready and a-quiver on his tongue. Every person is master
of both. But it is unsafe to predicate the person's acquaintance with the
shades and phases of the idea, or with the corresponding discriminations
in language. He may not know them at all, he may know them partially, he
may know them through and through. Let us suppose him ignorant of them but
determined to learn. His progress, both in the thought and in the
language, will be from the general to the specific. His acquaintance with
the idea in the large he will gradually extend to an acquaintance with it
in detail, and his command of the broad term for it he will little by
little supplement with definite terms for its phases. An illustration will
make this clear.
We are aware that the world is made up of various classes and conditions
of men. How did we learn this? Let us go back to the time when our minds
were a blank, when we were babes and sucklings, when we had not perceived
that men exist, much less that mankind is infinitely complex. A baby comes
slowly to understand that all objects in the universe are divisible into
two classes, human and non-human, and that a member of the former may be
separated from the others and regarded as an individual. It has reached
the initial stage of its knowledge on the subject; it has the basic idea,
that of the individual human being. As soon as it can speak, it acquires a
designating term--not of course the sophisticated _human being_, but
the simpler _man_. It uses this word in the generic sense, to
indicate _any_ member of the human race; for as yet it knows nothing
and cares nothing about differences in species. With increasing
enlightenment, however, it discerns five species, and distinguishes among
them by swelling this branch of its vocabulary to five words: man (in the
sense of adult male), woman, boy, girl, baby. (To be sure, it may chance
to have acquired a specific term, as _boy_ or _baby_, before the
generic term _man_; but if so, it has attached this term to some
particular individual, as the grocer's boy or itself, rather than to the
individuals of a species. Its understanding of the species as a species
comes after its understanding of the genus.) As time passes, it divides
mankind into yet further species by sundry other methods: according to
occupation, for example, as doctors, chauffeurs, gardeners; to race or
color, as white men; negroes, Malays, Chinese; to disposition, as heroes,
gift-givers, teasers, talkers; and so on. It perceives moreover that
species are made up of sub-species. Thus instead of lumping all boys
together it begins to distinguish them as big boys, little boys,
middle-sized boys, boys in long trousers, boys in short trousers, barefoot
boys, schoolboys, poor boys, rich boys, sick boys, well boys, friends,
enemies, bullies, and what not. It even divides the sub-species. Thus it
classifies schoolboys as bright boys, dullards, workers, shirkers,
teachers' favorites, scapegoats, athletes, note-throwers, truant-players,
and the like. And of these classes it may make yet further sub-divisions,
or at least it may separate them into the individuals that compose them.
In fine, with its growing powers and experience, it abandons its old
conception that all persons are practically alike, and follows human
nature through the countless ramifications of man's status, temperament,
activities, or fate. And it augments its vocabulary to keep pace, roughly
at least, with its expanding ideas. In thought and terminology alike its
growth is from genus to species.
So it is with all our ideas and with all our words to cap them. We radiate
from an ascertained center into new areas of knowledge; we proceed from
the broad, fundamental, generic to the precise, discriminatory, specific.
Upon this natural law are based the exercises in this chapter and the two
to follow. The starting-point is always a word representative of an
elementary idea--a word and an idea which everybody knows; the advance is
into the unknown or the unused, at any rate into the particular. Now
fundamental ideas are not very numerous, and these exercises include the
commoner ones. Such a method of studying synonyms must therefore yield
large and tangible results.
One matter, however, should be explained. Most books of synonyms start
with a word and list all the terms in any way related to it. The idea of
the compilers is that the more they give the student the more they help
him. But oftentimes by giving more than is strictly pertinent they
actually hinder and confuse him. They may do this in various ways, of
which two must be mentioned. First, they follow an idea too far afield.
Thus in listing the synonyms of _love_ they include such terms as
_kindness_ and _lenity_, words only through stretched usage
connected with _love_. Secondly, they trace, not one meaning of a
word, but two or more unrelated meanings when the word chances to possess
them. Thus in listing the synonyms of _cry_ they include both the
idea of weeping and the idea of calling or screaming. What are the results
of these methods? The student finds a clutter where he expects
rationalized order; he finds he must exclude many words which lie in the
borders and fringes of the meaning. Moreover he finds mere chance
associations mingled with marked kinships. In both cases he finds dulled
distinctions.
This book offers synonyms that are apropos and definite rather than
comprehensive. Starting with a basic idea, it finds the generic term; it
then disregards dim and distant relationships, confines itself rigorously
to one of perhaps two or three legitimate senses, and refuses to consider
the peculiar twists and devious ways of subsidiary words when they wander
from the idea it is tracing. It thus deliberately blinds itself to much
that is interesting. But this partial blindness enables it to concentrate
attention upon the matter actually under study, to give sharper
distinctions and surer guidance.