Editing Synonym (section)

==Lexicography==
Some [[lexicographer]]s claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) because [[etymology]], [[orthography]], phonic qualities, [[connotation]]s, ambiguous meanings, [[usage (language)|usage]], and so on make them unique.<ref>"In the strictest sense, ''synonymous'' words scarcely exist". ''Standard Dictionary'' (Funk & Wagnalls, 1894), entry for ''synonyms'' or ''synonymous'', as quoted in ''Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words'' (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam (Merriam-Webster ser.), [4th ed.] 1973 (SBN 0-87779-141-4)), p.&nbsp;19a (''Survey of the History of English Synonymy'', in ''Introductory Matter''); ''accord'', ''Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms'', ''id.'', pp.&nbsp;23a–25a, ''passim'' (''Synonym: Analysis and Definition'' (titular word & colon italicized in original & subtitle not), in ''Introductory Matter'').</ref> Different words that are similar in meaning usually differ for a reason: ''feline'' is more formal than ''cat''; ''long'' and ''extended'' are only synonyms in one usage and not in others (for example, a ''long arm'' is not the same as an ''extended arm''). Synonyms are also a source of [[euphemism]]s.

[[Metonymy]] can sometimes be a form of synonymy: ''the [[White House]]'' is used as a synonym of ''the administration'' in referring to the [[U.S. Executive Branch|U.S. executive branch]] under a specific president.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.essential-architecture.com/A-AMERICA-N/USA/USA-Washington/DC-001.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071110040451/http://www.essential-architecture.com/A-AMERICA-N/USA/USA-Washington/DC-001.htm|url-status=usurped|archive-date=November 10, 2007|title=World Architecture Images – The White House|website=essential-architecture.com|access-date=2019-12-09}}</ref> Thus, a metonym is a type of synonym, and the word ''metonym'' is a [[hyponymy and hypernymy|hyponym]] of the word ''synonym''.{{citation needed|date=February 2019}}

The analysis of synonymy, [[polysemy]], hyponymy, and hypernymy is inherent to [[taxonomy (general)|taxonomy]] and [[ontology (information science)|ontology]] in the [[information science]] senses of those terms.<ref>Hirst, Graeme. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20211104132456/ftp://ftp.db.toronto.edu/public_html/dist/gh/Hirst-Ontol-2009-as-published.pdf Ontology and the lexicon]." Handbook on ontologies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009. 269-292.</ref> It has applications in [[pedagogy]] and [[machine learning]], because they rely on [[word-sense disambiguation]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Turney|first=Peter D.|date=2008|title=A Uniform Approach to Analogies, Synonyms, Antonyms, and Associations|url=http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1599081.1599195|journal=Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics – Volume 1|series=COLING '08|location=Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, US|publisher=Association for Computational Linguistics|pages=905–912|isbn=978-1-905593-44-6|arxiv=0809.0124}}</ref>