A corpus-based study of English synonyms: rich, wealthy, and affluent

The study investigated three adjective synonyms in English, namely rich, wealthy, and affluent concentrating on two criteria: degree of formality and noun and adverb collocation with semantic preference. Two online dictionaries (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Merriam-Webster Dictionary) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were employed to explore the similarities and differences among the synonyms. The results indicated that based on their frequency of use across eight different genres, ‘affluent’ is the most formal followed by ‘wealthy’ and ‘rich’, respectively. Regarding the collocation and semantic preference, not all synonyms co-occur with the same words and they have unequal and distinct semantic categories. In terms of noun collocation, ‘rich’ and ‘wealthy’ are frequently used to describe people, occupations and money. ‘Wealthy’ and ‘affluent’ are also used to modify nouns about people and locations. Only ‘rich’ is found to explain nouns related to food, facts, and events. With regard to the adverb collocation, ‘rich’ and ‘wealthy’ are used when referring to the wealth related to emotional issues. ‘Wealthy’ and ‘affluent’ are used to express the wealth modified by adverbs which are related to the great size. Only ‘rich’ is applied when referring to the importance and abundance in terms of academic and specific disciplines or fields. This study suggested that the synonymous adjectives ‘rich’, ‘wealthy’, and ‘affluent’ are near- synonyms; therefore, they cannot be substituted in every context.