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she was very attached to her brother
because the synonyms are equivalent to
attached to
:
fond of, devoted to, full of regard for, full of admiration for; affectionate
towards, tender towards, caring towards; <informal> mad about, crazy
about, nuts about.
Linguistic evidence
OTE
was compiled using the Oxford English Corpus, the collective name for
Oxford’s holdings of language databases amounting currently to over 300 million
words of written and spoken English, which are in machine-readable form and
available for computational and lexicographical analysis. The text is drawn from a
very diverse range of sources (from scholarly journals to internet chatrooms, via
novels and newspapers), either as large portions of continuous text or as short
extracts selected for the ever-growing database of the Oxford Reading Programme
by its international network of readers.
The Oxford English Corpus allows lexicographers to sort and analyse thousands of
examples in context and thereby see more clearly than ever before how words are
actually used. For the specific purposes of this thesaurus they have been able to:
■
confirm whether a word has senses for which there are suitable synonyms
■
check the sense of words being selected as synonyms
■
actively find synonyms which have not previously been recorded.
The Corpus is also used to obtain the sentences and phrases given as examples of
usage.
Idiomatic phrases and phrasal verbs
English is full of idiomatic expressions—phrases whose meaning is more than the
sum of their parts. For example,
a shot in the dark
means ‘a guess’, while
a shot in
the arm
means ‘a boost’. Neither of these has very much to do with more literal
meanings of
shot
. Phrasal verbs are expressions such as
book in
and
turn out
,
consisting of a verb plus a particle. The meaning of a phrasal verb is also often
quite idiomatic; for example, the meanings of
take off
are quite distinct from the
meanings of
take
. This thesaurus includes a rich selection of both kinds of idiomatic
expression, and provides synonyms for each. If a word is used as both a noun and
a verb, the idiomatic expressions are entered as subentries under the part of
speech in which the word is used. Thus,
by the book
is given under the noun
senses of
book
, while
book in
is given under the verb senses.
Register: standard vs. informal and regional English
Informal usage is more prevalent than it was even just a few years ago. People may
be heard using slang expressions in quite formal contexts, while the use of swear
words and taboo words is on the increase. Taboos generally are weakening, though
more so in Australia, where
bastard
is scarcely different from
guy
or
chap
, and less
so in southern US States such as Texas. This thesaurus contains a rich selection of
informal and vulgar synonyms for more formal expressions. Users who wish to
avoid giving offence should treat the
vulgar slang
labels as warning notices.
Most of the synonyms given are, of course, part of standard English; that is, they
are in normal use in both speech and writing everywhere in the world, at many
different levels of formality, ranging from official documents to casual conversation.
These general synonyms are given first in each synonym set. Some words,
however, are appropriate only in particular contexts, and these are placed after the
standard expressions and labelled accordingly. The technical term for these
differences in levels of usage is ‘register’. The main register labels used in this
thesaurus are the following:
informal: normally used only in contexts such as conversations or letters
between friends, e.g.
swig
as a synonym for
drink
.
vulgar slang: informal language that may cause offence, usually because it refers
to bodily functions.
formal: normally used only in writing, in contexts such as official docu-
ments, e.g.
dwelling
as a synonym for
home
.
technical: normally used only in technical and specialist language, though not
necessarily restricted to any specific field, e.g.
littoral
as a synonym
for
beach
. Words used in specific fields are given appropriate labels,
e.g.
Medicine
,
Christianity
.
literary:found only or mainly in literature written in an ‘elevated’ style, e.g.
ambrosial
as a synonym for
delicious
.