16
FINDING A SYNONYM
The LITERACY WORD BANK includes a thesaurus to
help children find synonyms. Synonyms are words that
have the same or similar meanings, for example, gem,
jewel, precious stone. Synonyms for a word can be
found by typing the word at the thesaurus Word Entry
screen and pressing
. Thesaurus entries (when
available) can also be looked up from the definition of a
word, and the definition of a word (when available) can
also be found from a thesaurus entry.
Each thesaurus entry consists of: a) The headword (the
word being looked up), in bold b) The part of speech, in
italics, c) An example sentence using the headword, in ital-
ics, d) Synonyms or words of similar meaning and e) A
word that has the opposite meaning to the word that is
looked up. For example, the entry for admire, has “
AN
OPPOSITE IS
: despise.”
When a word can be used in more than one sense, each
new sense is numbered and comes with its own example
sentence or phrase and list of synonyms. Informal words
are called out in brackets; for example, the entry for guts
has [informal] before the example sentence.
Some words may have cross-references, or suggestions to
look up other entries. For example, the thesaurus entry for
brass, has “
FOR OTHER METALS
,
SEE
metal.”
To find synonyms, follow the example below.