English Synonyms and Antonyms by James Champlin Fernald (best ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📕

some appeal to the feelings. One argues a case solely on rational grounds and supposably with fair consideration of both sides; he advocates one side for the purpose of carrying it, and under the influence of motives that may range all the way from cold self-interest to the highest and noblest impulses; he pleads a cause, or pleads for a person with still more intense feeling. Beseech, entreat, and implore imply impassioned earnestness, with direct and tender appeal to personal considerations. Press and urge imply more determined or perhaps authoritative insistence. Solicit is a weak word denoting merely an attempt to secure one's consent or cooperation, sometimes by sordid or corrupt motives. Prepositions:

Plead with the tyrant for the captive; plead against the oppression or the oppressor; plead to the indictment; at the bar; before the court; in open court.

PLEASANT. Synonyms: agreeable, good-natured, kindly, pleasing, attractive, kind, obliging, pleasurable.

That is pleasing from which pleasure is received, or may readily be received, without reference to any action or intent in that which confers it; as, a pleasing picture; a pleasing landscape. Whatever has active qualities adapted to give pleasure is pleasant; as, a pleasant breeze; a pleasant (not a pleasing) day. As applied to persons, pleasant always refers to a disposition ready and desirous to please; one is pleasant, or in a pleasant mood, when inclined to make happy those with whom he is dealing, to show kindness and do any reasonable favor. In this sense pleasant is nearly akin to kind, but kind refers to act or intent, while pleasant stops with the disposition; many persons are no longer in a pleasant mood if asked to do a troublesome kindness. Pleasant keeps always something of the sense of actually giving pleasure, and thus surpasses the meaning of good-natured; there are good-natured people who by reason of rudeness and ill-breeding are not pleasant companions. A pleasing face has good features, complexion, expression, etc.; a pleasant face indicates a kind heart and an obliging disposition, as well as kindly feelings in actual exercise; we can say of one usually good-natured, "on[276] that occasion he did not meet me with a pleasant face." Pleasant, in the sense of gay, merry, jocose (the sense still retained in pleasantry), is now rare, and would not be understood outside of literary circles. Compare AMIABLE; COMFORTABLE; DELIGHTFUL.

Antonyms: arrogant, displeasing, glum, ill-humored, repelling, austere, dreary, grim, ill-natured, repulsive, crabbed, forbidding, harsh, offensive, unkind, disagreeable, gloomy, hateful, repellent, unpleasant. Prepositions:

Pleasant to, with, or toward persons, about a matter.

PLENTIFUL. Synonyms: abounding, bountiful, generous, plenteous, abundant, complete, large, profuse, adequate, copious, lavish, replete, affluent, enough, liberal, rich, ample, exuberant, luxuriant, sufficient, bounteous, full, overflowing, teeming.

Enough is relative, denoting a supply equal to a given demand. A temperature of 70° Fahrenheit is enough for a living-room; of 212° enough to boil water; neither is enough to melt iron. Sufficient, from the Latin, is an equivalent of the Saxon enough, with no perceptible difference of meaning, but only of usage, enough being the more blunt, homely, and forcible word, while sufficient is in many cases the more elegant or polite. Sufficient usually precedes its noun; enough usually and preferably follows. That is ample which gives a safe, but not a large, margin beyond a given demand; that is abundant, affluent, bountiful, liberal, plentiful, which is largely in excess of manifest need. Plentiful is used of supplies, as of food, water, etc.; as, "a plentiful rain," Ps. lxviii, 9. We may also say a copious rain; but copious can be applied to thought, language, etc., where plentiful can not well be used. Affluent and liberal both apply to riches, resources; liberal, with especial reference to giving or expending. (Compare synonyms for ADEQUATE.) Affluent, referring especially to riches, may be used of thought, feeling, etc. Neither affluent, copious, nor plentiful can be used of time or space; a field is sometimes called plentiful, not with reference to its extent, but to its productiveness. Complete expresses not excess or overplus, and yet not mere sufficiency, but harmony, proportion, fitness to a design, or ideal. Ample and abundant may be applied to any subject. We have time enough, means that we can reach our destination without haste, but also without delay; if we have ample time, we may move leisurely, and note[277] what is by the way; if we have abundant time, we may pause to converse with a friend, to view the scenery, or to rest when weary. Lavish and profuse imply a decided excess, oftenest in the ill sense. We rejoice in abundant resources, and honor generous hospitality; lavish or profuse expenditure suggests extravagance and wastefulness. Luxuriant is used especially of that which is abundant in growth; as, a luxuriant crop.

Antonyms: deficient, inadequate, narrow, scanty, small, drained, insufficient, niggardly, scarce, sparing, exhausted, mean, poor, scrimped, stingy, impoverished, miserly, scant, short, straitened. Preposition:

Plentiful in resources.

POETRY. Synonyms: meter, numbers, poesy, song, metrical composition, poem, rime, verse.

Poetry is that form of literature that embodies beautiful thought, feeling, or action in melodious, rhythmical, and (usually) metrical language, in imaginative and artistic constructions. Poetry in a very wide sense may be anything that pleasingly addresses the imagination; as, the poetry of motion. In ordinary usage, poetry is both imaginative and metrical. There may be poetry without rime, but hardly without meter, or what in some languages takes its place, as the Hebrew parallelism; but poetry involves, besides the artistic form, the exercise of the fancy or imagination in a way always beautiful, often lofty or even sublime. Failing this, there may be verse, rime, and meter, but not poetry. There is much in literature that is beautiful and sublime in thought and artistic in construction, which is yet not poetry, because quite devoid of the element of song, whereby poetry differs from the most lofty, beautiful, or impassioned prose. Compare METER.

Antonyms: prosaic speech, prosaic writing, prose. POLITE. Synonyms: accomplished, courtly, genteel, urbane, civil, cultivated, gracious, well-behaved, complaisant, cultured, obliging, well-bred, courteous, elegant, polished, well-mannered.

A civil person observes such propriety of speech and manner as[278] to avoid being rude; one who is polite (literally polished) observes more than the necessary proprieties, conforming to all that is graceful, becoming, and thoughtful in the intercourse of refined society. A man may be civil with no consideration for others, simply because self-respect forbids him to be rude; but one who is polite has at least some care for the opinions of others, and if polite in the highest and truest sense, which is coming to be the prevailing one, he cares for the comfort and happiness of others in the smallest matters. Civil is a colder and more distant word than polite; courteous is fuller and richer, dealing often with greater matters, and is used only in the good sense. Courtly suggests that which befits a royal court, and is used of external grace and stateliness without reference to the prompting feeling; as, the courtly manners of the ambassador. Genteel refers to an external elegance, which may be showy and superficial, and the word is thus inferior to polite or courteous. Urbane refers to a politeness that is genial and successful in giving others a sense of ease and cheer. Polished refers to external elegancies of speech and manner without reference to spirit or purpose; as, a polished gentleman or a polished scoundrel; cultured refers to a real and high development of mind and soul, of which the external manifestation is the smallest part. Complaisant denotes a disposition to please or favor beyond what politeness would necessarily require.

Antonyms: awkward, clownish, ill-mannered, insulting, uncouth, bluff, coarse, impertinent, raw, unmannerly, blunt, discourteous, impolite, rude, unpolished, boorish, ill-behaved, impudent, rustic, untaught, brusk, ill-bred, insolent, uncivil, untutored. POLITY. Synonyms: constitution, policy, form or system of government.

Polity is the permanent system of government of a state, a church, or a society; policy is the method of management with reference to the attainment of certain ends; the national polity of the United States is republican; each administration has a policy of its own. Policy is often used as equivalent to expediency; as, many think honesty to be good policy. Polity used in ecclesiastical use serves a valuable purpose in distinguishing that which relates to administration and government from that which relates to faith and doctrine; two churches identical in faith may differ in polity, or those agreeing in polity may differ in faith. Compare LAW.

[279]

PORTION. Synonyms: lot, parcel, part, proportion, share.

When any whole is divided into parts, any part that is allotted to some person, thing, subject or purpose is called a portion, tho the division may be by no fixed rule or relation; a father may divide his estate by will among his children so as to make their several portions great or small, according to his arbitrary and unreasonable caprice. When we speak of a part as a proportion, we think of the whole as divided according to some rule or scale, so that the different parts bear a contemplated and intended relation or ratio to one another; thus, the portion allotted to a child by will may not be a fair proportion of the estate. Proportion is often used where part or portion would be more appropriate. Compare PART.

POVERTY. Synonyms: beggary, distress, mendicancy, pauperism, privation, destitution, indigence, need, penury, want.

Poverty denotes strictly lack of property or adequate means of support, but in common use is a relative term denoting any condition below that of easy, comfortable living; privation denotes a condition of painful lack of what is useful or desirable, tho not to the extent of absolute distress; indigence is lack of ordinary means of subsistence; destitution is lack of the comforts, and in part even of the necessaries of life; penury is especially cramping poverty, possibly not so sharp as destitution, but continuous, while that may be temporary; pauperism is such destitution as throws one upon organized public charity for support; beggary and mendicancy denote poverty that appeals for indiscriminate private charity.

POWER. Synonyms: ability, competency, expertness, readiness, aptitude, dexterity, faculty, skill, capability, efficacy, force, strength, capacity, efficiency, might, susceptibility, cleverness, energy, qualification, talent. cogency,

Power is the most general term of this group, including every quality, property, or faculty by which any change, effect, or result is, or may be, produced; as, the power of the legislature to enact laws, or of the executive to enforce them; the power of an acid to[280] corrode a metal; the power of a polished surface to reflect light. Ability is nearly coextensive with power, but does not reach the positiveness and vigor that may be included in the meaning of power, ability often implying latent, as distinguished from active power; we speak of an exertion of power, but not of an exertion of ability. Power and ability include capacity, which is power to receive; but ability is often distinguished from capacity, as power that may be manifested in doing, as capacity is in receiving; one may have great capacity for acquiring knowledge, and yet not possess ability to teach. Efficiency is active power to effect a definite result, the power that actually does, as distinguished from that which may do. Competency is equal to the occasion, readiness prompt for the occasion. Faculty is an inherent quality of mind or body; talent, some special mental ability. Dexterity and skill are readiness and facility in action, having a special end; talent is innate, dexterity and skill are largely acquired. Our abilities include our natural capacity, faculties, and talents, with all the dexterity, skill, and readiness that can be acquired. Efficacy is the power to produce an intended effect as shown in the production of it; as, the efficacy of a drug. Efficiency is effectual agency, competent power; efficiency is applied in mechanics as denoting the ratio of the effect produced to the power expended in producing it; but this word is chiefly used of intelligent agents as denoting the quality that brings all one's power to bear promptly and to the best purpose on the thing to be done. Compare ADDRESS; DEXTERITY; SKILFUL.

Antonyms: awkwardness, helplessness, inability, incompetence, stupidity, dulness, imbecility, inaptitude, inefficiency, unskilfulness, feebleness, impotence, incapacity, maladroitness, weakness. PRAISE. Synonyms: acclaim, approbation, compliment, laudation, acclamation, approval, encomium, panegyric, adulation, cheering, eulogy, plaudit, applause, cheers, flattery, sycophancy.

Praise is the hearty approval of an individual, or of a number or multitude considered individually, and is expressed by spoken or written words;