THE RIGHT WORD

Context and Usage Limits

Consider the words oppress and bully. Tyrants and political systems oppress a section of a society or even a country. A person bully individuals or small groups.

Words that appear synonymous can only be correctly used in certain contexts. These restrictions are stated on most good dictionaries.

There are times when we have to choose between words with tighter restrictions and words with few restrictions. Although dictionaries and thesauruses might provide synonyms with roughly the same meaning of the word we looked up, the contexts in which they can be correctly used can be quite different.