Lesson 9 - Synonyms Lesson for Kids: Definition & Examples

What Are Synonyms?

Synonyms are words that have the exact or almost exact meaning as another word in the same language. For this reason, synonyms can be interchangeable with other words. Interchangeable means that you can easily switch out one thing for another.

Let's look at an example of how synonyms work. Look at the sentence:

I had a great birthday party last year.

We want to use another word instead of the word 'great.' Can you think of some other words that mean exactly or almost exactly the same thing as 'great?' We will use the word 'fantastic,' which is a synonym for the word 'great.' Now the sentence will read:

I had a fantastic birthday party last year.

The words 'rich' and 'wealthy' are another example. When they are interchanged in the same sentence, they give the same meaning.

Things to Remember

While it may seem simple to come up with synonyms, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. It's important to really look at the context of the sentence or piece of writing to make sure that the synonym you want to use doesn't change the meaning. Context is the words before and after a word that give it meaning.

For example, let's say you wanted to replace the word 'good' with the word 'great.' These can sometimes be synonyms, but other times, the word 'great' will change the overall meaning of the sentence too much. The same could be true for replacing 'good' with 'okay.' It might work for one sentence, but not another.

Another thing to look for is the article that comes before the word you want to replace. Depending on what word you are using, you may have to change the article. Let's take the sentence we used in the first paragraph. If you wanted to replace 'great' with 'amazing,' you would have to change the article.

I had a great birthday party last year.

Would change to:

I had an amazing birthday party last year.

The article changed from 'a' to 'an' since amazing starts with a vowel.

Finding Synonyms

Finding new synonyms is really about building your vocabulary. The best place to find synonyms is in a thesaurus. A thesaurus is like a dictionary, except that it tells you words that have similar or exact meanings of the word you are looking for.

It's always handy to have a thesaurus with you when you write. This way, you can make sure that you aren't using the same words over and over or using words that don't make sense in your writing.

Lesson Summary

Okay, let's take a minute to review what we've learned. Synonyms are words that mean the exact same or almost the exact same thing as another word in the same language. This means they can be interchangeable with other words, meaning that you can easily switch out one thing for another. Synonyms can help your writing be more descriptive and colorful, but you need to make sure that they don't change the context, which are basically the words before and after a word that give it meaning. You can find synonyms using a thesaurus, so grab that thesaurus and give it a try. You might be surprised by some of the unexpected words you can use to describe things.