Desynonymize
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To deprive of synonymous character; to cause no longer to be synonyms.
"It is not, I own, easy to conceive a more opposite translation of the Greek Phantasia, than the Latin Imaginatio; but it is equally true that in all societies there exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious good sense working progressively to desynonymize those words originally of the same meaning, which the conflux of dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous languages, as the Greek and German: […]"
Example
More examples"It is not, I own, easy to conceive a more opposite translation of the Greek Phantasia, than the Latin Imaginatio; but it is equally true that in all societies there exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious good sense working progressively to desynonymize those words originally of the same meaning, which the conflux of dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous languages, as the Greek and German: […]"
Etymology
From de- + synonymize.
More for "desynonymize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.