ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most obvious meaning relationship between two words is that they can both mean the same thing. In this case, we talk of the two words being SYNONYMS. When we say that what Americans call a truck the British call a lorry, we are saying that truck and lorry are synonyms. Near-synonyms are exploited in dictionary definitions (e.g. fray 'to wear (as an edge of cloth)' in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary). If we take synonyms to be words which always mean the same thing so that one of them can replace the other in absolutely any sentence, then synonyms are extraordinarily rare. Usually synonyms differ in that they are used in different dialects, in different styles, in different combinations or in that the meanings of two words may overlap, but each has its own area as well. For instance, freedom and liberty are commonly treated as synonyms (and either could be used of someone who had just come out of captivity in the sentence She is enjoying her freedom! liberty), but they appear in different combinations, because although we have freedom of expression and academic freedom there is no general corresponding liberty of expression or academic liberty. Equally, the meaning of liberty is not fully contained within the meaning of freedom, because the meaning in She took a real liberty! is peculiar to liberty, and not available for freedom. You will find the term synonym used in two slightly different ways: either it is used to say that two words have the same meaning in some partic-
ular context, or it is used in a wider sense to mean that two lexemes always have precisely the same meaning. Here, I shall use the second of these; in most cases very little hinges on which is meant.
