[Lexicog] Re: Synonymy

[Ron Moe]

I've enjoyed this discussion on the difference between 'big' and 'large'.
While you are at it, could you all take a stab at distinguishing the
following:

big, large, biggish, bulky, ample, astronomical, big, brawny, broad, bulky,
burly, capacious, cavernous, chubby, colossal, considerable, corpulent,
elephantine, enlarge, enormous, expanded, expansive, extended, extensive,
extenuate, fat, fleshly, gangling, gangly, generous, giant, gigantic,
goodly, grand, great, gross, huge, immense, imposing, inflated, large,
mammoth, massive, massy, monstrous, monumental, obese, outsized, overgrown,
oversized, overweight, paunchy, plump, podgy, ponderous, portly, prodigious,
pudgy, roly-poly, roomy, rotund, sizable, spacious, stocky, stout,
strapping, stupendous, substantial, tubby, tremendous, unwieldy, vast,
voluminous, wide, widespread, be a whopper, be quite a size, be big inside,
fair-sized, be a fair size, good-sized, be a good size,

Which brings me to the point-- One of my goals is to compile the sorts of
factors that would distinguish each of these words from the others. Some
factors have already been mentioned in the discussion. For instance some
words are more formal than others-- you would tend to use 'large' in a
technical article and 'big' in a colloquial conversation. Some factors may
belong to what is traditionally called semantics-- 'huge' means 'very big',
'unwieldy' means 'big and hard to move'. Other factors would be
traditionally relegated to pragmatics, such as the formal/informal or
written/oral distinction. There is also the matter of collocational
restrictions-- 'brawny, burly, chubby, corpulent, fat, fleshly' (and others
in the list) collocate with words referring to people. Some factors may be
rather general across the lexicon. For instance the formal/informal
distinction might apply to words in any semantic domain. Other factors are
more limited in their applicability. I would only expect 'very' to be a
component of meaning in domains composed of adjectives and abstracts, but I
would expect it to show up in most if not all of those domains. Does anyone
know of a treatise that compiles these factors and describes them? I
realize, of course, that this is the heart of lexicography and is a mammoth
(large) subject. Essentially what I want is a 'lexicographer's checklist',
so that if I have any two 'synonyms' I can use the checklist to search for
something that would help me distinguish them.

Ron Moe



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