14 of the funniest English synonyms

2770

synonymsToday’s post is about synonyms in the English language and their use in different contexts, as illustrated in ‘14 of the funniest English synonyms’.

It is no secret that English can be one of the most challenging languages to learn. When it comes to synonyms, people tend to misunderstand their real meaning. Synonyms are not words with the same meaning, but rather words with similar meanings. Learning synonyms enables us to understand those meanings and differentiate between them.

One of the synonyms in the list is ‘grub’, whose literal meaning people may not know. As well as being an informal synonym for food (for example, ‘let’s have some grub, I’m starving!’), it actually denotes an insect larva or maggot.

When I think of the word ‘wicked’, what immediately comes to mind is something bad, as described in the article. However, it can actually mean the opposite (‘Sophie makes wicked cakes’, i.e. her cakes are fantastic), or be used for emphasis (‘wow, that game is wicked awesome!’).

I was surprised to discover that the English language is so rich, thanks to its history of adopting words from many other languages (Arabic and French to name but two) – helped along by colonisation, of course.

You can find a list of more synonyms here.

 

Soraia Monteiro, TermCoord trainee

Master’s student in terminology and specialised information at Universidade Nova de Lisboa