It was customary to use French borrowings together with their native synonyms. They are very often characterized by alliteration, rhymes, idioms, etc.

Synonymy – the coincidence in the essential meanings of linguistic elements which (at the same time) usually preserve their differences in connotations and stylistic characteristics.

Synonyms – two or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some contexts. Their distinctive features can be connotations, stylistic features, distributional or depending on valency. The difference between some synonyms can be marked for register subject-field, mode, and style (tenor) or their combinations.

Typology of synonyms:

- cognitive synonyms – s. which differ in respect of the varieties of discourse in which they appear; the distinction between such items lies not so much in their inner lexical meaning, but in the sphere of their actual application or usage, as besides the referential basis (referential meaning – q.v.) the actual meanings of the words as found in utterances reflect relations which hold between lexical items within the communicative space, i.e. the functional differentiation of discourse.

- contextual/context-dependent synonyms – similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions, when the difference between the meanings of two words is contextually neutralized: e.g. buy and get;

- dialectal synonyms – pertaining to different variant of language from dialectal stratification point of view;

- functional synonyms – the term is not lexicological proper as it refers to different syntactic units capable of performing one and the same syntactic function (e.g. Subordinate Object Clause and Complex Object constructions are functional synonyms;

- ideographic synonyms – differ in shades of meaning, i.e. between which a semantic different is statable;

- stylistic synonyms– are distinguished stylistically, i.e. in all kinds of emotional, expressive and evaluative overtones without explicitly displaying semantic difference;

- referential synonyms – a vague term, concerns coreferential expressions, when one denotatum can be defined differently from different points of view and in different aspects: e.g. names Walter Scott and the author of 'Ivanhoe' are coreferential because they refer to one and the same denotatum – Sir Walter Scott;

- terminological synonyms – two existing terms for one denotatum: e.g. borrowing and loan-word; concept and notion (the difference between them is not discriminated by some linguists);

- total synonyms - can replace each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations (e.g. noun and substantive, functional affix, flection and inflection); is a rare occasion.

18. The origin of English words: native and borrowed elements.

It is true that English vocabulary, which is one of the most extensive amongst the world's languages contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Explanations for this should be sought in the history of the language which is closely connected with the history of the nation speaking the language. In order to have a better understanding of the problem, it will be necessary to go through a brief survey of certain historical facts, relating to different epochs.

By etymology of words is understood their origin

of "native servant"). The explanation is simple: these words have been borrowed by Russian from English and therefore are not cognates of their English counterparts.

It should be taken into consideration that the English proper element also contains all the later formations, that is, words which were made after the 5th century according to English word-building patterns (see Ch. 5, 6) both from native and borrowed morphemes. For instance, the adjective 'beautiful' built from the French borrowed root and the native suffix belongs to the English proper element. It is natural, that the quantity of such words is immense.

On a straight vocabulary count, considering the high percentage of borrowed words, one would have to classify English as a language of international origin or, at least, a Romance one (as French and Latin words obviously prevail). But here another factor comes into play, the relative frequency of occurrence of words, and it is under this heading that the native Anglo-Saxon heritage comes into its own. The native element in English comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and, also, words denoting everyday objects and ideas (e. g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good, bad, etc.).