Synonyms are words that have the same or similar meanings, whereas antonyms have opposite or contrary meanings.
When searching for a word, this tool provides its grammatical category as well as the word from which it is derived. In addition, it displays:
- ☑ Words with very similar meanings (synonyms).
- Antonyms: Words with opposite meanings.
This Spanish Thesaurus contains all possible meanings of a word, allowing users to resolve any ambiguity and obtain lists of synonyms corresponding to the sense of the word in question. For example, if you enter the word cerca in the search bar, it will display results for the noun cerca (meaning “fence” or “enclosure”) and for the conjugation of the verb cercar (meaning “to surround or enclose”).
Absolute synonyms are words that mean exactly the same and are interchangeable in any context. For instance, dentista / odontólogo (dentist/odontologist). However, in general, words tend to be synonymous in just one of their meanings or in certain senses, which is called partial synonymy. In light of this, this dictionary groups synonyms according to each different meaning of the word.
Likewise, when entering an inflected word, that is, marked for gender, number, person, tense or mood, the finder recognizes its morphology and displays synonyms inflected in the same grammatical form. For example, when searching for the word librito (diminutive of libro meaning book), the results returned are volumencito, ejemplarcito, tomito, all of which are also diminutives. In the case of words that cannot be inflected in the same way as the searched word, results appear in their root or lemma form.
This dictionary of synonyms and antonyms contains nearly 50,000 entries and over 500,000 synonyms, antonyms and related words, making it one of the most comprehensive dictionaries in the Spanish language. In addition, it was used by Microsoft Office for many years and its contents were subsequently licensed to Microsoft in perpetuity for proprietary use.