Stylistic lexicology

The Common Core

• Parts of the body: hand, foot, arm, eye, heart, chin, bone
• Natural landscape: land, field, meadow, hedge, hill, wood, oak
• Domestic life: house, home, stool, door, floor, weave, knit
• Calendar: sun, moon, day, month, year
• Animals: horse, cow, sheep, dog, hen, goat, swine, fish
• Common adjectives: black, white, wide, long, good, dark
• Common verbs: fly, drink, swim, help, come, see, eat, sit, send, sell, think, love, say, be, go, do, shove, kiss, have, live

Synonyms are not absolute, there is always a slight semantic difference in a synonymous pair but the main distinction between synonyms remains stylistic. And it may be of different types- it may lie in the emotional tension (small-little-tiny) connoted in a word, or in the degree of the quality (fear-terror-awe) denoted, or in the sphere of its application(opponent-rival-foe).

• COLLOQUIAL NEUTRAL LITERARY
• Kid child infant
• Daddy father parent
• Chap fellow associate
• Go on continue proceed
• Teenager boy/girl youth/maiden
• Make a move begin commence

TYPES of SYNONYMS

• Synonym (Greek “same” + “name”)
• Autumn and fall – dialect difference
• Insane and loony – formal and informal
• Salt and sodium chloride – everyday and technical
• Rancid (butter,bacon) and rotten (everything else)
• Youngster and youth – pleasant and less pleasant
• Enough – sufficient; perplexed/bewildered; eventually/at last; dishonest/discreditable

DYNAMICS AND TENDENCIES

• Both literary and colloquial words have their upper and lower ranges.
• The lower range of the common literary words approaches the neutral layer and has a tendency to pass into it, while the upper range of the common colloquial layer can easily pass into the neutral layer.
• So, the lines between common colloquial and neutral, on the one hand, and common literary and neutral, on the other, are blurred
• Colloquial and literary words assume a far greater degree of concreteness, thus causing subjective evaluation, producing a definite impact on the reader or hearer