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actual synonyms but which have a different kind of relation to the headword. For
example, at
milk
, the adjective relating to milk is given (
lactic
); at
town
, the related
adjectives
urban
,
municipal
, and the rarer
oppidan
. Examples of other types of
relation include collective nouns (e.g.
school
at
dolphin
, or
cast
at
hawk
) and words
for the male, female, or young of an animal (e.g.
leveret
at
hare
, or
tom
,
queen
, and
kitten
at
cat
), phobias (e.g.
arachnophobia
at
spider
), the study of a particular
subject (e.g.
bryology
at
moss
), or a geometric figure with a given number of sides
(e.g.
pentagon
at
five
).
Some ‘word links’ are prefixes or suffixes related to the headword, such as
photo
- at
light
,
cerebro
- at
brain
, and -
metry
at
measurement
; knowledge of prefixes and
suffixes helps the user to understand many new or unfamiliar words, such as
photometry
and
cerebrospinal
.
‘Choose the Right Word’ notes
No two synonyms are exactly the same: they may have subtly different meanings or
be used in different contexts. For instance, the words
blunt
,
candid
,
forthright
,
frank
,
and
outspoken
are all synonyms of each other because they all have roughly the
same meaning, but there are subtle differences. There are 120 ‘Choose the Right
Word’ notes devoted to explaining the differences in meaning between groups of
close synonyms totalling well over 400. The distinctions are based on careful
analysis of actual usage as recorded in the Oxford English Corpus (see Linguistic
Evidence above). This analysis involved the most up-to-date computational
techniques to sift large amounts of data, as well as traditional lexicographical
analysis.
Confusables
There are, in addition, 45 notes explaining the difference between pairs of words
such as
militate
and
mitigate
,
flaunt
and
flout
, or
principal
and
principle
, that may
cause difficulty because they are written or pronounced similarly but have different
meanings.
Word lists
The updated word list feature in
OTE
comprises over 400 lists designed to
supplement the main entries. While the main entry for, say,
sport
gives synonyms
for
sport
—
game
,
recreation
, etc.—the list entitled ‘Sports’ gives the names of
particular sports—
archery
,
badminton
,
curling
,
dressage
, etc. These lists make this
thesaurus an invaluable aid to crossword-solving and a fascinating source of
encyclopedic information on subjects as diverse as clouds, cocktails, marsupials,
and martial arts. There are cross-references (
) to these lists from appropriate
words in the main text.