Hello everyone! I hope you had a
good holiday and new year’s celebration.
We talked about how to use a dictionary
before Christmas, and this time we’re
going to talk about another book that
can help you understand new words.
But first, I had to learn about something
that I’m gonna share too!
We need to talk about synonyms,
which are words that mean almost the
same thing, but not exactly. Have you
ever asked someone who knew more
words than you to explain what a new
word meant? Think for a minute about
it. Do you remember how they talked to
you?
For example, if you asked your mom
what excited meant, she might say that it
means very happy about something. The
phrase “very happy about something” is
the first step to getting synonyms. So we
now know that excited is kinda like being
happy, but not exactly.
If you wanted to say it faster, you
might say happy and excited are close to
the same meaning. But synonyms mean
slightly different things, like the amount
of happiness that you’re trying to tell
someone about. As an example, happy
can be soft and sunshiny, or it can be really,
really happy like someone is givingyou a doggy treat! Yum!
This means that excited and happy are synonyms to each
other. They’re related to each other, but
they’re different. Think about your own
brothers and sisters, or your mom and
dad. You’re related because you’re a family,
but you’re not that person.
When you look up a synonym for a
word, sometimes you want to also know
what the word doesn’t mean. Remember,
synonyms are related words, but
different. But sometimes we want to
know the other kind of word, a word that
means the opposite. That word is called
an antonym. An antonym is the opposite
of what word you’re looking up. If we
were to think of an antonym for happy,
can you think of any words that might
mean the opposite of happy? Maybe
you thought about sad, or angry? Those
two words are antonyms for happy. They
mean the opposite of being happy.
If a dictionary doesn’t really explain
what a word means to you, sometimes
a book of synonyms can make it easier.
A book of synonyms is called a thesaurus.
A thesaurus sometimes also has antonyms
after the synonyms, so you can
see that excited is a synonym of happy,
but an antonym for excited might be
bored.
L.E. Bear