plesionym

English

WOTD – 5 October 2018

Etymology

plesio- (“close, near”) +‎ -onym.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpliːzɪənɪm/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpliːzɪəˌnɪm/
• Hyphenation: ple‧sio‧nym

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

plesionym (plural plesionyms)

1. (linguistics) A word that is almost a synonym but which has a slightly different meaning.
   • 1986, D[avid] A[lan] Cruse, “Synonymy”, in Lexical Semantics (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, published 1997, →ISBN, section 12.4 (Congruence Relations and Synonymy), page 290:

     It was suggested in 12.1 that propositional synonyms are 'more synonymous' than plesionyms, which, in turn, are 'more synonymous' than non-synonyms.

   • 2002, Isaac S. Kohane, editor, Bio*medical Informatics: One Discipline: The Annual Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association, November 9–13, 2002 [...] San Antonio, TX: Proceedings, Philadelphia, Pa.: Hanley & Belfus, →ISBN, page 168, column 2:

     An immediate question is when does a plesionym cross a "vertical distance boundary" to become a different concept?

   • 2014, Siobhan Chapman, Billy Clark, editors, Pragmatic Literary Stylistics (Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition), New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →DOI, →ISBN:

     Such a semantic intertextual frame arises when the lexical item 'mist' is linked to its plesionym 'fog' and an intertextual link between two texts containing these lexical items is created.

   • 2015, Louise Mullany, Peter Stockwell, “Lexical Semantics”, in Introducing English Language: A Resource Book for Students (Routledge English Language Introductions), 2nd edition, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, section B (Development: Aspects of English), page 68:

     A word is a plesionym if it is a near-synonym, but substitution of the word does not leave the same truth conditions. For example, it 'It wasn't misty, just foggy', the words 'misty' and 'foggy' are pleisonyms of each other. […] Plesionyms are often used to indicate that the speaker is grappling after precision, but perhaps does not possess the precise vocabulary or technical term for the object in mind.

Synonyms

• parasynonym
• near-synonym
• poecilonym

Derived terms

• plesionymous
• plesionymy

Translations

word that is almost a synonym but which has a slightly different meaning — see near-synonym

Anagrams

• monyplies