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STANDARD EDUCATIONAL SERIES

Jethic Blume Sterne

ENGLISH SYNONYMS AND

ANTONYMS

WITH NOTES ON THE CORRECT USE
OF PREPOSITIONS

DESIGNED AS A COMPANION FOR THE STUDY
AND AS A TEXT-BOOK FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS

BY

JAMES C. FERNALD

EDITOR OF SYNONYMS, ANTONYMS, AND PREPOSITIONS IN THE STANDARD DICTIONARY

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1899
4.3

[blocks in formation]

Copyright, 1896, by FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY.

Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, Eng.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES.

BEQUEST

ESTATE OF SETTIE BLUME STERNE

JUNE 10. 1950

PREFACE.

The English language is peculiarly rich in synonyms, as, with such a history, it could not fail to be. From the time of Julius Cæsar, Britons, Romans, Northmen, Saxons, Danes, and Normans fighting, fortifying, and settling upon the soil of England, with Scotch and Irish contending for mastery or existence across the mountain border and the Channel, and all fenced in together by the sea, could not but influence each other's speech. English merchants, sailors, soldiers, and travelers, trading, warring, and exploring in every clime, of necessity brought back new terms of sea and shore, of shop and camp and battle-field. English scholars have studied Greek and Latin for a thousand years, and the languages of the Continent and of the Orient in more recent times. English churchmen have introduced words from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, through Bible and prayer-book, sermon and tract. From all this it results that there is scarcely a language ever spoken among men that has not some representative in English speech. The spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race, masterful in language as in war and commerce, has subjugated all these various elements to one idiom, naking not a patchwork, but a composite language. Anglo-Saxon thrift, finding often several words that originally expressed the same idea, has detailed them to different parts of the common territory or to different service, so that we have an almost unexampled variety of words, kindred in meaning but distinct in usage, for expressing almost every shade of human thought.

Scarcely any two of such words, commonly known as synonyms, are identical at once in signification and in use. They have certain common ground within which they are interchangeable; but outside of that each has its own special province, within which any other word comes as an intruder. From these two qualities arises the great value of synonyms as contributing to beauty and effectiveness of expression. As interchangeable, they make possible that freedom and variety by which the diction of an accomplished writer or speaker differs from the wooden uniformity of a legal document. As distinct and specific, they enable a master of style to choose in every instance the one term that is the most

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