A corpus-based study of English synonyms: garbage, trash, and rubbish

This study aimed to investigate the similarities and differences of synonymous nouns garbage, trash and rubbish, with a concentration on meanings, collocations and grammatical patterns.The sources of data used in this study are 1) two dictionaries, i.e. online Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and online Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, and 2) the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This study found that garbage, trash and rubbish share the same core meaning, however they are loose synonyms since they still differ in terms of detailed meanings, collocations and grammatical patterns. For this reason, the three words cannot be used interchangeably in all contexts. Students can focus on the accurate use of synonyms for effective communication and be more aware in the differences between synonyms. Teachers of the English language should give emphasis on the similar as well as dissimilar properties of the synonymous words and consequently apply the results on learning both grammar and collocations.