So it is with all our ideas and with all our words to cap them.  We radiate from an ascertained center into new areas of knowledge; we proceed from the broad, fundamental, generic to the precise, discriminatory, specific.  Upon this natural law are based the exercises in this chapter and the two to follow.  The starting-point is always a word representative of an elementary idea—­a word and an idea which everybody knows; the advance is into the unknown or the unused, at any rate into the particular.  Now fundamental ideas are not very numerous, and these exercises include the commoner ones.  Such a method of studying synonyms must therefore yield large and tangible results.

One matter, however, should be explained.  Most books of synonyms start with a word and list all the terms in any way related to it.  The idea of the compilers is that the more they give the student the more they help him.  But oftentimes by giving more than is strictly pertinent they actually hinder and confuse him.  They may do this in various ways, of which two must be mentioned.  First, they follow an idea too far afield.  Thus in listing the synonyms of love they include such terms as kindness and lenity, words only through stretched usage connected with love.  Secondly, they trace, not one meaning of a word, but two or more unrelated meanings when the word chances to possess them.  Thus in listing the synonyms of cry they include both the idea of weeping and the idea of calling or screaming.  What are the results of these methods?  The student finds a clutter where he expects rationalized order; he finds he must exclude many words which lie in the borders and fringes of the meaning.  Moreover he finds mere chance associations mingled with marked kinships.  In both cases he finds dulled distinctions.

This book offers synonyms that are apropos and definite rather than comprehensive.  Starting with a basic idea, it finds the generic term; it then disregards dim and distant relationships, confines itself rigorously to one of perhaps two or three legitimate senses, and refuses to consider the peculiar twists and devious ways of subsidiary words when they wander from the idea it is tracing.  It thus deliberately blinds itself to much that is interesting.  But this partial blindness enables it to concentrate attention upon the matter actually under study, to give sharper distinctions and surer guidance.

EXERCISE A

After three introductory groups (dealing with thoroughly concrete ideas and words) the synonyms in this exercise are arranged alphabetically according to the first word in each group.

This first word is generic.  It is immediately followed by a list of its synonyms.  These are then informally discriminated or else (in a few instances) questions are asked about them.  Perhaps a few less closely related synonyms are then listed for you to discriminate in a similar way.  Finally, illustrative sentences are given.  Each blank in these you are to fill with the word that conveys the meaning exactly. (To prevent monotony and inattention, the number of illustrative sentences varies.  You may have to use a particular word more than once, and another word not at all.)