Dictionary

desynonymize en · VERB

Etymology

From de- + synonymize.

Meanings

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: […] 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface—Mr. [William] Wordsworth’s Earlier Poems—On Fancy and Imagination—The Investigation of the Distinction Important to the Fine Arts”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume I, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, page 87:

Forms