Description:
<jats:p>A little studied aspect of the prolific linguistic controversies in eighteenth-century England is the development of synonymy. Not only were books of synonyms late to appear and uncertain as to their function and methods, but synonymy was one of the last departments to be introduced into the English dictionary. This slow development is not surprising, since just discrimination between words of almost identical meaning requires not only an authoritative dictionary and grammar as tools but a relatively settled state of the language and a body of recognized opinion on questions of usage. The evolution of English synonymy not only stems immediately from the French, but the steps leading toward this goal may be paralleled in France from fifty to one hundred years earlier.</jats:p>