plesionym

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English

WOTD – 5 October 2018

Etymology

From plesio- (“close, near”) +‎ -onym.

Pronunciation

Noun

plesionym (plural plesionyms)

  1. (linguistics) Synonym of parasynonym.
    • 1986, D A 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.

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