Near-Synonym

A Near-Synonym is term whose meaning similar but not synonymous to another term.

• AKA: Parasynonym, Plesionym.
• Example(s):
  • "salinity" and "saltiness node label"
  • "seep" and "drip",
  • "enemy" and "foe",
  • "error" and mistake,
  • "woods" and forest,
  • "ruin" and "annihilate",
  • "thin" and "slender",
  • "task" and "job",
  • "give" and "donate".
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Synonym.
• See: Controlled Vocabulary, Linguistics.

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References

2019a

• (Wiktionary, 2019) ⇒ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/near-synonym 2019-02-15
  • QUOTE: near-synonym (plural near-synonyms):

1. (linguistics) A term whose meaning is similar, but not identical, to that of another term.

2019b

• (Wikipedia, 2019) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-onym#Words_that_end_in_-onym Retrieved:2019-2-15.
  • (...)
    • phytonym: a name of a plant.
    • plesionym or near-synonym: word that is almost synonymous with another word, but not quite
    • pseudonym: a false and fictitious name, especially one adopted by an author; a pen name.
    • (...)

2005

• (ANSI Z39.19, 2005) ⇒ ANSI. (2005). “ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies." ANSI.
  • QUOTE: near-synonym: A term whose meaning is not exactly synonymous with that of another term, yet which may nevertheless be treated as its equivalent in a controlled vocabulary. Example: salinity, saltiness node label A “dummy” term, often a phrase, that is not assigned to documents when indexing, but which is inserted into the hierarchical section of some controlled vocabularies to indicate the logical basis on which a class has been divided. Node labels may also be used to group categories of related terms in the alphabetic section of a controlled vocabulary.

2002

• (Edmonds & Hirst, 2002) ⇒ Philip Edmonds, and Graeme Hirst (2002). "Near-synonymy and lexical choice". Computational linguistics, 28(2), 105-144.
  • QUOTE: Usually, words that are close in meaning are near-synonyms (or plesionyms) — almost synonyms, but not quite; very similar, but not identical, in meaning; not fully intersubstitutable, but instead varying in their shades of denotation, connotation, implicature, emphasis, or register (DiMarco, Hirst, and Stede 1993).

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