English Synonyms and Antonyms

Author(s)

• James Champlin Fernald

English Synonyms and Antonyms is basically a vocabulary builder that students might use as they prepare for entrance or exit exams. Each entry gives a list of synonyms, followed by a paragraph that briefly explains or exemplifies the subtle distinctions between the listed words. The entries sometimes close with a few words on the prepositions that follow selected synonyms, but more often with a list of antonyms.

By "synonyms" we usually understand words that coincide or nearly coincide in some part of their meaning, and may hence within certain limits be used interchangeably, while outside of those limits they may differ very greatly in meaning and use. It is the office of a work on synonyms to point out these correspondences and differences, that language may have the flexibility that comes from freedom of selection within the common limits, with the perspicuity and precision that result from exact choice of the fittest words to express each shade of meaning outside of the common limits. (Summary by DSayers and the author from the entry "Synonymous")

1. Preface
2. Abandon to Abridgment
3. Absolute to Accessory
4. Accident to Address, n.
5. Adequate to Airy
6. Alarm to Alliance
7. Allot to Ambition
8. Amend to Answer
9. Anticipate to Appear
10. Appendage to Artist
11. Ask to Attain
12. Attitude to Axiom
13. Babble to Because
14. Becoming to Bluff
15. Body to By
16. Cabal to Caricature
17. Carry to Change, n.
18. Character to Clear
19. Clever to Congratulate
20. Conquer to Criminal
21. Daily to Delicious
22. Delightful to Difference
23. Difficult to Dogmatic
24. Doubt, v. to Duty
25. Eager to Emigrate
26. Employ to Enmity
27. Entertain to Esteem, n.
28. Eternal to Exterminate
29. Faint to Fetter
30. Feud to Follow
31. Food to Frugality
32. Garrolous to Grief
33. Habit to Harvest
34. Hatred to High
35. Hinder to Hypothesis
36. Idea to Imagination
37. Immediately to Influence
38. Inherent to Involve
39. Journey to Kill
40. Language to Light
41. Likely to Love
42. Make to Meter
43. Mind to Mysterious
44. Name to Necessity
45. Neglect to Notwithstanding, prep.
46. Oath to Oversight
47. Pain to Pay, n.
48. People to Perverse
49. Physical to Poetry
50. Polite to Predestination
51. Prejudice to Primeval
52. Profit to Proverb
53. Prowess to Quote
54. Racy to Record
55. Recover to Renounce
56. Repentence to Revelation
57. Revenge to Rustic
58. Sacrament to Self-Abnegation
59. Send to Shake
60. Shelter to Slander
61. Slang to Stain
62. State to Subvert
63. Succeed to System
64. Taciturn to Time
65. Tip to Transient
66. Union to Veneration
67. Venial to Virtue
68. Wander to Youthful