A Study of Dimension Related Synonyms in English

Introduction.

 

In the following study, I compare the usage in English of the synonyms “big” and “large”, “wide” and “broad”, and “tall” and “high”. The aim in doing this is to find out which words occur in what context, and if there is a difference in the meaning of the words as they are used by people in the media, and in conversation. To understand the importance of defining words in our language, especially synonyms, imagine the following scene.

You are a reporter for a newspaper office in Boston and you are given an important assignment. You have to take a red-eye train and meet a family at the Greyhound train station in New York and interview them. In a letter from the office administrator, you are told that the family is from some European country, and that it is a large family. So you pack your backpack, but just as you are about to leave, your boss calls you to make sure that you have all the details. “The family are big,” he says. Upon arriving in New York, you see two families, both of which are made up of many people. Neither of the two families speak English well – one family is Spanish speaking, the other speaks some unidentifiable Eastern European language. The difference is that one family is very heavy and fat, the other family is not. Both families are large in number, but which family is big? Or, should we say, are big? I suppose you could ask them.

This is only one situation in which a problem with synonyms could occur. The corpus which I will use for this study is the Cobuild corpus (found on Telnet at titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk). It mostly contains material from spoken British English, Australian English, and various current printed materials such as newspapers from the Australian and British corpora. Cobuild also contains some data from American English. Because English is so widely spoken, the corpus does not include all the possible data; it focuses more on the countries where English is the dominant language. However, in the process, this study is denied the slim possibility of being 100% accurate.

 

A Study of Dimension Related Synonyms in English

Part One: frequency of usage in corpora and context of use.

 

1.   “Big” and “Large”

1a. Query: <big>

            Search of all corpora:

Corpora	Occurrences
oz news ukephem ukmags ukspok usephem bbc npr ukbooks usbooks times today sunnow	2494 441 2368 4217 375 588 1183 1295 1884 2222 2687 4412

           

            Notes: The word “big” occurs very frequently in the British spoken corpora.

                        Sentences from data:

                                    “No it’s not that sort of big, it’s just a big nose.”

                                    “I mean this was the big thing Mrs. Thatcher sovereignty.”
                                    “I mean it’s pointless betting any big money on a horse like that.”

1b. Query: <large>

            Search of all corpora:

Corpora	Occurrences
oz news ukephem ukmags ukspok usephem bbc npr ukbooks usbooks times today sunnow	1053 1204 1532 1116 417 816 623 1525 1471 1285 610 356

           

            Notes: The word “large” occurs most often in written texts.

                        Sentences from data:

                                    “Damage caused by damming large areas of wilderness.”

                                    “Very occasionally, humans may develop large cysts.”

                                    “Serves 6 to 8, 2 large aubergines, 2 or 3 parsnips, peeled.”

2.   “Tall” and “High”

2a. Query: <tall>

            Search of all corpora:

Corpora	Occurrences
oz news ukephem ukmags ukspok usephem bbc npr ukbooks usbooks times today sunnow	176 135 393 171 230 16 58 379 370 169 168 147

           

            Notes: The word “tall” occurs very frequently magazines and books. However, from looking at the data we can see that it is often used to describe people, particularly in personal ads.

                        Sentences from data:

                                    “…Caucasian, in his early 20s, 168 cm tall, and very thin.”

                                    “He is 167 cm tall and bald.”

                                    “BLIND, 30 tall, fair, into leather/rubber seeking…”

                                    “Discuss which letters are tall and which are short.”

                                    “Miguel drove into the tall grass with a crunch.”

2b. Query: <high>

            Search of all corpora:

Corpora	Occurrences
oz news ukephem ukmags ukspok usephem bbc npr ukbooks usbooks times today sunnow	2901 2253 2462 1622 720 949 1334 1930 2553 3093 2318 2016

           

            Notes: From the data, the word “high” is most often used in a descriptive sense.

                        Sentences from data:

                                    “Go easy on grog and high-kilojoule fizz drinks.”

                                    “He said the burden of high rates fell unevenly on the community.”

3. “Wide” and “Broad”.

3a. Query: <wide>

            Search of all corpora:

Corpora	Occurrences
oz news ukephem ukmags ukspok usephem bbc npr ukbooks usbooks times today sunnow	1011 336 717 689 656 643 566 246 531 389 135 304

           

            Notes: According to the data, the word “wide” is used to describe a large area, or in terms of concrete measurements.

                        Sentences from data:

                                    “ ‘Now opportunities for women are wide open,’ she said.”

                                    “Honest musicians world-wide, may end up being in the minority.”

                                    “A Commodore is 1.79m wide.”

3b. Query: <broad>

            Search of all corpora:

Corpora	Occurrences
oz news ukephem ukmags ukspok usephem bbc npr ukbooks usbooks times today sunnow	161 149 121 315 161 84 121 288 255 197 89 48

           

            Notes: The word “broad” is used most in British English. This is probably an old word, usually used as place names.

                        Sentences from data:

                                    “President of the RSL branch at Broadford, north of Melbourne.”

                                    “This year’s broad theme is ‘spanning old and new’ .”

 

A Study of Dimension Related Synonyms in English

Part Two: collocations.

(For details see attached data.)

 

Big: collocates most frequently with descriptive words.

Large: collocates with words that have to do with measurements.

 

Tall: collocates with descriptive words used for people.

High: collocates most with inanimate objects.

 

Wide: collocates with words used to describe width in measurements.

Broad: collocates with areas or places, and rarely people.

 

A Study of Dimension Related Synonyms in English

Results.

 

From this study, I find that some words have more of an “animate” quality than their synonyms. These words “big”, “wide”, and “tall” are often used to describe people, or used figuratively. The difference between “wide” and “broad” are not as distinct as “big” and “large”. (I was surprised to find that “broad” was sometimes used in terms which were not measurable at all. For example, such and such an idea covers a “broad range” of topics.)

For these reasons, the family I had mentioned in the introduction would be “large” if they were heavy people because large is used as a measurable word often used to describe individual weights, but they would be “big” if it meant that they were big in number. In the same way, people often say, “big idea”, or “big mistake”, rather than “large idea” and “large mistake”.