This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Lester S. King, MD

JAMA. 1968;204(2):151-152.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In discussing linguistic precision a recent letter¹ raised the point whether "there are in fact any two exactly synonymous words in the English language," particularly in medical terminology. The writer challenged readers to identify any such terms, and indicated that the pair "abdomen" and "belly" had already been tested and found wanting, as well as the triad "necropsy," "autopsy," and "postmortem examination." The topic deserves further discussion.

A synonym is a word that has the "same sense" as another. Synonyms, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are words that have "the same general sense, but possessing each of them meanings which are not shared by the others, or having different shades of meaning or implications appropriate to different contexts." The essence of synonymy is that, under certain circumstances or in particular contexts, the meanings overlap. It is not possible to have two words that mean the same in all . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Scientific Publications Division, American Medical Association, Chicago.

Footnotes
Reprints are not available, since the substance of these contributions will be presented later in a paperback edition.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?