Word.ws English Dictionary

plesionymy

plesionymy noun: the state of being close but not identical in meaning, as with the words "overcast" and "cloudy".

Noun

plesionymy (uncountable)

  1. The state of being close but not identical in meaning, as with the words "overcast" and "cloudy".
    • The line between plesionymy and cognitive synonymy can be drawn with some precision. However, the limits of plesionymy in the opposite direction along the scale of synonymity are more difficult to specify; as the semantic distance between between lexical items increases, plesionymy shades...2000, Tony Bex, Michael Burke, Peter Stockwell, Contextualized Stylistics: In Honour of Peter Verdonk, →ISBN, page 26
    • Indeed an analysis in which the semantics of plesionymy (near but peculiar synonymy) can be traced through the text (see Stockwell 2000) serves only to increase the appreciation of the poetic mechanics of paranoia and disturbance in the text.2012, Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons, Brian McHale, The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, →ISBN, page 58

Origin of plesionymy

From plesionym + -y.

Questions about plesionymy

What does plesionymy mean?
Plesionymy means the state of being close but not identical in meaning, as with the words "overcast" and "cloudy".
What part of speech is plesionymy?
Plesionymy is a noun.

Words near plesionymy in the dictionary

  1. plesiomorphy
  2. plesionym
  3. plesionymic
  4. plesionymous
  5. plesionyms
  6. plesionymy
  7. plesiopedal
  8. plesiopelvic
  9. plesiopid
  10. plesiopids
  11. plesiopithecid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plesionymy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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