Webster's New World Thesaurus [antikvár]

FOREWORD This book is intended to help writers and speakers in search of a better way to say what they want to. Traditionally, such a need was to be served by supplying a synonym. Within limits, this is sound auctorial practice, to cultivate choice of words and to replace words hastily or ineptly chosen with words more precise, more vigorous, better suited to the tone of a composition, or in somé other way appropriate, but as a comprehensive statement of what to do about words it can now be seen to be both misleading and inadequate. Strictly speaking, there are no synonyms, since by definition synonyms are words having the same meaning. But no two words are identical or even so nearly identical that we could lose either without loss to the language. If we think of meaning as the totál impact of a word upon a reader or hearer, every word can do something that no other word could do. Gun, as either a sound or a sequence of three letters, can do more and less than can cannon, howitzer, rifle, or revolver, all of which are likely to appear in a list of synonyms for gun. Words assumed to be synonyms can refer to different objects, make varying observations about these objects, and stir different sorts of pictures and emotions in users of the langauge. If somé industrious person, for whom we might coin the genus cartolexicographer; were to make maps of the meanings of words, we should find that no two of these maps could be imposed one upon the other so that the lower would be completely concealed, while the upper did not project at any point. Thus, if this volume were only a book of synonyms, strictly speaking there would be nothing to put into it, and if one wished to be quite literal he could reduce it to unobtrusive pocket size by imitating the celebrated chapter of Giraldus Cambrensis on the nonexistent snakes of Ireland, and write, "SYNONYMS. Chapter One: There are no synonyms. THE END." And if there are no synonyms, how can there be antonyms, although antonyms have traditionally found a place in books on words? If no two words can be entirely alike, we should scarcely expect to find a collection of words precisely opposite to other words. Down as a direction is roughly opposite to up as a direction, but in no sense is it an antonym to the value of up in phrases like grow up or double up, in drink it up as against drink it down. And many words by their very nature can have no antonym. If gun has no precise synonym, still less does it have an antonym; even no-gun would not be an exact antonym, if there were such a word. One recalls that charming line in one of Edwin Ford Piper's poems, "What is the opposite of unless?" Obviously, there is no opposite of unless, although the question has found its way into somé crudely constructed true-false examinations. But if there are neither synonyms nor antonyms, there are other ways of speaking and writing, better or worse ways of expressing oneself. And here we are at the core of using language. Of course language is not only vocabulary; it is alsó grammar, phonetics, and rhetoric, along with somé other studies, but those subjects are at least partly out of the realm of this book. Nonetheless, although devices like grammar and vocabu-