Learning English

Synonyms and collocation

Learning synonyms is a great way to improve your vocabulary, but it's also important to remember collocation.

Collocation means words that 'go together'. Some words go together with other words, but their synonyms might not.

Take the word unhappy, for example. There are many synonyms for unhappy. Here are just a few:

sad, miserable, low, blue, downcast, down in the dumps.

If someone asks you "how are you feeling?" you could reply with any of those words or expressions and the meaning would be clear.

Unhappy collocates or 'goes together with' other words and phrases. For example:

He had an unhappy childhood. 

This is the best collocation for childhood. You could say a sad childhood or a miserable childhood but they don't sound quite as natural.

The other synonyms of unhappy do not go together with childhood at all.

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Adverb collocations

With emotions, such as unhappiness, we often use certain adverbs. Here are some examples with different degrees of intensity, from weakest to strongest:

"How are you feeling?"

"Oh, you know, a bit / a little * / rather / quite / very  unhappy, to be honest."

You can also use these adverbs with the synonyms of unhappy.

*Note: although we can use a little we don't use a lot as an adverb before adjectives.

Study tip

When making a note of new vocabulary also try to find synonyms and words that go together with it. Get used to using a dictionary or thesaurus to help you. In many online programmes and web-browsers you can right click (CTRL click on a Mac) to show a menu which will give you the option to look up a word and see synonyms as well as definitions.

To do

In this exercise you have to decide if the words or phrases are synonyms or not. You can use the information on these pages but you may also have to use a dictionary or thesaurus.

Next

That's the end, finish, completion of this session on synonyms! In the next session it's time for some grammar as we look at used to, be used to and get used to. Do they mean the same?