“1. Explain synonymy using a minimum of two sources. 2. Comment on which of the sources used you found least, or most, useful and why. In particular you might comment on any ambiguities or contradictions in the explanations.”

The word synonym is formed from the Greek words same and name.  In basic terms, when two or more phonologically different expressions have the same meaning as each other they are said to be synonymous (if they are phonetically identical then they are polysemous).  An expression can be just one word/ lexeme or it can be a few, just as long as the meanings between the two expressions are the same then they are synonyms.  As a basic definition this is fine but if you take it literally then there are problems with two expressions having the same meaning….(short extract)