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

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is one of the most common of errors, and one of the most difficult to avoid, while their right use gives to style cohesion, firmness, and compactness, and is an important aid to perspicuity. To the text of the synonyms is appended a set of Questions and Examples to adapt the work for use as a text-book. Aside from the purposes of the class-room, this portion will be found of value to the individual student. Excepting those who have made a thorough study of language most persons will discover with surprise how difficult it is to answer any set of the Questions or to fill the blanks in the Examples without referring to the synonym treatment in Part I., or to a dictionary, and how rarely they can give any intelligent reason for preference even among familiar words. There are few who can study such a work without finding occasion to correct some errors into which they have unconsciously fallen, and without coming to a new delight in the use of language from a fuller knowledge of its resources and a clearer sense

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does necessity compare with need? 4. What is an essential? EXAMPLES.

Courage is, on all hands, considered as an —— of high character.

No living man can send me to the shades
Before my time; no man of woman born,
Coward or brave, can shun his ——.
NEGLECT, n. (page 251). QUESTIONS.

1. What is neglect? negligence? How do the two words compare? 2. What senses has negligence that neglect has not? 3. Which of the two words may be used in a passive sense? 4. What is the legal phrase for a punishable omission of duty?

EXAMPLES.

Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, ——
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd.

But, alas, to make
A fixed figure, for the hand of ——
To point his slow unmoving finger at.

[470]

NEW (page 252). QUESTIONS.

1. What is the meaning of new? of modern? of recent? 2. How does recent compare with new? 3. What is the meaning of novel? of fresh? 4. To what do young and youthful distinctively apply?

NIMBLE (page 253). QUESTIONS.

1. To what does nimble properly refer? 2. To what does swift apply? 3. How does alert compare with nimble? For what is alert more properly a synonym?

EXAMPLES.

Win her with gifts, if she respect not words;
Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind,
More —— than words, do move a woman's mind.

Profound thinkers are often helpless in society, while shallow men have —— and ready minds.

NORMAL (page 253). QUESTIONS.

1. What does natural signify? normal? Give instances of the distinctive use of the two words. 2. What does typical signify? regular? common?

EXAMPLES.

He does it with a better grace, but I do it more ——.

The —— round of work may grow monotonous, but it is evidently necessary.

NOTWITHSTANDING (page 254). QUESTIONS.

1. What is the signification of however as a conjunction? of nevertheless? 2. Which is the most emphatic word of the group and what does it signify? 3. How do yet and still compare with notwithstanding? with but? 4. What is the force of tho and altho? 5. How does notwithstanding as a preposition differ from despite or in spite of?

EXAMPLES.

—— do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

—— till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.

There was an immense crowd —— the inclement weather.

OATH (page 254). QUESTIONS.

1. What is an oath? an affidavit? How does the affidavit differ from the oath? 2. What is an adjuration? 3. What is a vow? How does it differ from an oath? 4. Of what words is oath a popular synonym? 5. In what do anathema,[471] curse, execration, and imprecation agree? 6. What is an anathema? 7. Is a curse just or unjust? 8. What does execration express? imprecation?

EXAMPLES.

Better is it that thou shouldest not ——, than that thou shouldest —— and not pay.

Then how can any man be said
To break an —— he never made?
OBSCURE (page 255). QUESTIONS.

1. What is obscure? 2. How does obscure compare with complicated? with complex? with abstruse? with profound?

OBSOLETE (page 256). QUESTIONS.

1. When is a word obsolete? When is a word archaic? 2. Is an old or ancient word necessarily obsolete? 3. What is meant by saying that a word is rare? 4. Is a rare word necessarily obsolete or an obsolete word necessarily rare?

EXAMPLES.

When the labors of modern philologists began, Sanscrit was the most —— of all the Aryan languages known to them.

Atlas, we read in —— song,
Was so exceeding tall and strong,
He bore the skies upon his back,
Just as the pedler does his pack.

It is wonderful that so few —— words are found in Shakespeare after the lapse of three centuries.

OBSTINATE (page 256). QUESTIONS.

1. How does headstrong differ from obstinate and stubborn? 2. How do obstinate and stubborn differ from each other? Which is commonly applied to the inferior animals and to inanimate things? 3. What is the meaning of refractory? How does it differ from stubborn? Which word is applied to metals, and in what sense? 4. What is the meaning of obdurate? contumacious? pertinacious? 5. What words do we apply to the unyielding character or conduct that we approve?

EXAMPLES.

Is it in heav'n a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too —— a heart,
To act a Lover's or a Roman's part?

"I shall talk of what I like," she said wilfully, clasping her hands round her knees with the gesture of an —— child.

[472]

OBSTRUCT (page 257). QUESTIONS.

1. What is the literal meaning of obstruct? How does it compare with hinder? 2. How does obstruct compare with impede? 3. What does arrest signify in the sense here considered?

EXAMPLES.

There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and ——.

No, no ——ing the vast wheel of time,
That round and round still turns with onward might.
OLD (page 257). QUESTIONS.

1. What does old signify? 2. How do old and ancient compare? 3. What contrasted senses has old? 4. What is the special force of olden? 5. In what sense are gray, hoary, and olden used of material objects? 6. To what is aged chiefly applied? 7. To what do decrepit, gray, and hoary apply, as said of human beings? 8. To what does senile apply? 9. In what sense is elderly used? 10. What are the primary and derived meanings of remote? 11. What does venerable express?

EXAMPLES.

The hills,
Rock-ribbed and —— as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The —— woods, ...
... and, poured round all,
—— ocean's gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.

Through the sequestered vale of rural life,
The —— patriarch guileless held
The tenor of his way.

O good —— head which all men knew!

Shall we, shall —— men, like —— trees,
Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling,
Still more enamored of their wretched soil?
OPERATION (page 258). QUESTIONS.

1. What does operation denote? and by what kind of agent is it effected? 2. What do performance and execution denote? and by what kind of agents are they effected? 3. How does performance differ from execution?

EXAMPLES.

It requires a surgical —— to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.

His promises were, as he then was, mighty;
But his ——, as he is now, nothing.

[473]

ORDER (page 258). QUESTIONS.

1. What does instruction imply? direction? 2. How does order compare with direction? 3. To what classes of persons are orders especially given? How does an order in the commercial sense become authoritative? 4. How does command compare with order? 5. In what sense is requirement used? By what authority is a requirement made? 6. In what sense is prohibition used? injunction?

EXAMPLES.

General Sherman writes in his Memoirs, "I have never in my life questioned or disobeyed an ——."

"Ye shall become like God"—transcendent fate!
That God's —— forgot, she plucked and ate.
OSTENTATION (page 259). QUESTIONS.

1. What is ostentation? How does it compare with boasting? display? show? 2. What is pomp? pageant or pageantry? What do the two latter words suggest, and how do they compare with pomp? 3. From what is parade derived? What is its primary meaning? With what implication is it always used in the metaphorical sense? How does parade compare with ostentation?

EXAMPLES.

The boast of heraldry, the —— of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave.
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

The President's salary does not permit ——, nor, indeed, is —— expected of him.

With all his wealth, talent, and learning, he was singularly free from ——.

OVERSIGHT (page 260). QUESTIONS.

1. In what two contrasted senses is oversight used? 2. How does superintendence compare with oversight? 3. With what special reference is control used? 4. What kind of a term is surveillance, and what does it imply?

EXAMPLES.

Those able to conduct great enterprises must be allowed wages of ——.

O Friendship, equal poised ——!

Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the —— thereof not by constraint, but willingly.

OUGHT (page 260). QUESTIONS.

1. What does ought properly signify? 2. How does ought compare with should? 3. In what secondary sense is ought sometimes used?[474]

EXAMPLES.

He has not a right to do what he likes, but only what he —— with his own, which after all is his own only in a qualified sense.

Age —— have reverence, and —— be worthy to have it.

PAIN (page 261). QUESTIONS.

1. What is pain? suffering? 2. How does distress rank as compared with pain and suffering? 3. What is an ache? a throe? a paroxysm? 4. What is agony? anguish?

EXAMPLES.

To each his ——s; all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's ——,
The unfeeling for his own.

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ——, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature.
PALLIATE (page 261). QUESTIONS.

1. How do cloak and palliate agree in original meaning? How do they differ in the derived senses? 2. What is it to extenuate, and how does that word compare with palliate?

EXAMPLES.

Speak of me as I am; nothing ——
Nor aught set down in malice.

We would not dissemble nor —— [our transgressions] before the face of Almighty God, our heavenly Father.

I shall never attempt to —— my own foibles by exposing the error of another.

PARDON, v. (page 262). QUESTIONS.

1. What is it to pardon? 2. To what does forgive refer? 3. How do pardon and forgive differ in use in accordance with the difference in meaning? 4. What is it to remit? to condone? to excuse?

EXAMPLES.

How many will say ——,
And find a kind of license in the sound
To hate a little longer!

I —— him, as heaven shall —— me.

To err is human, to ——, divine.

[475]

PARDON, n. (page 262). QUESTIONS.

1. What is acquittal? How does it differ from pardon as regards the person acquitted or pardoned? 2. Is an innocent person ever pardoned? 3. What is oblivion? amnesty? absolution?

EXAMPLES.

For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter
Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called ——.

——, not wrath, is God's best attribute.

—— to the injured does belong,
But they ne'er —— who have done the wrong.
PART, n. (page 264). QUESTIONS.

1. What is a part? 2. What is a fragment? a piece? 3. What do division and fraction signify? 4. What is a portion? 5. What is a share? an instalment? a particle? 6. What do component, constituent, ingredient, and element signify? How do they differ from one another? 7. What is a subdivision?

EXAMPLES.

The best —— of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered

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