Introducing English Linguistics

Synonymy.
Synonymy is a semantic relation that has been extensively
studied. The true test of synonymy is substitutability: the ability of two
words to be substituted for one another without a change in meaning. For
instance, the example below contains the verb assist.
The research assistant was available to assist patients completing the
survey.
(CIC)
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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If help is a synonym of assist, then it should be able to be substituted for
assist in the above example without a change in meaning:
The research assistant was available to help patients completing the survey.
Because the two sentences are identical in meaning, help and assist can be
considered, at least in the above contexts, as absolute synonyms.
However, absolute synonymy is a controversial notion. Bolinger (1977:
ix–x) proposed the non-synonymy principle because he believed that
absolute synonymy does not exist. For him, every linguistic form has one
(and only one) meaning. Therefore, even though two words may be close
in meaning, they will never be identical in meaning. Edmonds and Hirst
(2002: 107) argue that “Absolute synonymy, if it exists at all, is quite rare”
because if words were truly synonymous they would need to “be able to be
substituted one for the other in any context in which their common sense
is denoted with no change to truth value, communicative effect, or ‘mean-
ing’ (however ‘meaning’ is defined).” It is easy to find examples illustrat-
ing the difficulty of the notion of absolute synonymy.
Most dictionaries will list hard as a synonym of difficult. In the two exam-
ples below, both hard and  difficult can be interchanged with little differ-
ence in meaning:
He finds it difficult [hard] to describe his feelings
(BNC A06 838)
I do not deal with the equally hard [difficult] problem of the patient
who is admitted unconscious to hospital after a suicide attempt
(BNC ASK 1523)
In the next two examples, substituting hard for  difficult produces con-
structions that are not entirely idiomatic:
Charles also found himself in a difficult [?hard] position.
(BNC AOF 140)
Thus Frits Staal distinguishes between “the difficult [?hard] ways of con-
templation” and “the easy way of drugs” by means of ...
(CIC)
While stupid and unintelligent both mean ‘lacking intelligence,’ the sub-
stitution of one for the other produces very different results. The example
below is taken from an academic book in which the author wishes to
counter the common assumption that people who are illiterate lack intel-
ligence. Because the word stupid has such negative connotations, using it
in this context would negate the intended meaning of the author.
Freire believed that peasant adults, though often illiterate, are not unin-