SYNONYM. When any one of several words will serve to name or express the same thing, that thing is said to be polyonymous, or many-named, and the words are called synonyms (Gr. names together, or in company). In this wide sense, man, soldier, general, Frenchman, might be called synonyms, as they can all be applied to denote the same individual—e.g., Napoleon. See NOUN. But the term is commonly applied in a restricted sense to words having substantially the same meaning, with only slight shades of differ ence—as observe and remark. In a settled and matured language, no two words can have exactly the same meaning; in such a case, one of them would be superfluous, and would be silently dropped. Words that were originally identical in application, have become differentiated by usage, each being appropriated to a special variety of the gen eral notion.
The English language abounds in pairs of synonyms like sharp and acute, of which the one is Anglo-Saxon, the other borrowed from the Latin. It would be difficult to
a case of more exact correspondence of sense than acutus in Latin, and sharp (Ger. scharf) in Teutonic; but acute in English has become confined to the metaphorical sense of sharpness of the intellect or of the senses, the only case of its retaining the pri mary, physical signification being in the technical phrase, an "acute angle." Sha7p,, again, is applied both in the physical sense and also in the metaphorical; but metaphor ical sharpness is not exactly the same thing as acuteness. A " sharp" lad is one quick in apprehension and movement; an " acute" intellect is one having great power of pene tration and discrimination; while in a lawyer of "sharp" practice, a reprehensible moral quality is implied.