Thesaurus: synonyms and antonyms

Reading a result

A word is not only its definition. In Ilena it can also carry up to three indications that help you judge how it will sound in your text.

• Language level — Ilena uses the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2. It does not measure whether a word is “good” or “bad”: it says how common, how familiar or how demanding it is for a reader or a listener. A1 and A2 are the very common vocabulary, understood at once by almost everyone. B1 and B2 cover the everyday vocabulary of an adult at ease in the language. C1 and C2 gather the rarer words — precise, literary, technical, or less immediately accessible. For a song this can be decisive: a chorus meant to be understood on first hearing usually gains by staying in the simple levels, while a closing line or a strong image can carry a rarer word perfectly well.
• Register — formal, neutral or informal. Two words can mean almost the same thing and still belong to very different voices. A formal word in a spoken verse can sound artificial; a familiar word can give exactly the closeness you were after.
• Emotion — because two close synonyms do not always carry the same charge. One can soften a line, another make it harsher, more nostalgic or brighter.

These badges appear only when the corpus holds the information. An absence is better than an invented precision.

Poetic synonyms and antonyms

Ilena also tells strictly lexical relations apart from poetic ones.

A poetic synonym is not necessarily a word that means exactly the same thing. It is a word that can play a close part in an image, an emotion or a line. House, home and refuge are not interchangeable in a dictionary, but they can sometimes occupy the same poetic ground.

The same goes for poetic antonyms. A logical opposite negates an idea: hot / cold. A poetic opposition creates a tension instead: fire / ice, light / night, silence / uproar. It is not only after exactness; it is after what the contrast can do to the text.

The dictionary describes the relations between words. Poetry decides which of them deserve to be brought together.

Going further

If you write lyrics, see also Ilena for songwriters. If you work mainly in poetry, see Ilena for poets. On putting this to work in a full piece, read how to write a song; for rhyme rather than meaning, the rhyming dictionary answers the same corpus.