Catch, grab, and grasp: a corpus-based study of English synonyms

The study aimed to investigate the substitution of three verb synonyms, namely catch, grab, and grasp, focusing on the similarities and differences in terms of lexical information, collocation information, and degree of formality. The data was obtained from two lexical resources: MacMillan Dictionary Online (2016) and the 520 million word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings revealed the similarities of these synonyms since they contained a share meaning of “to hold something/someone.” The examples are “…Kate, who caught it with one hand…., He grabbed the knife …., She grasped his hand….” The findings also disclosed differences of these synonyms. Regarding the lexical information, it was additionally found that each synonym contained other specific meanings, for example, catch can be also defined as “to get disease or illness” e.g. He caught the flu…., grab can be also defined as “to eat quickly or sleep for a short” e.g. I’ll grab a sandwich …., grasp can be also defined as “to get the meaning and understanding something” e.g. …it difficult to grasp the rules of the game. Considering the collocation information, the investigation showed that each synonym mostly had different collocates, for example, the noun collocate most frequently used with catch was “eye”, with grab its was “arm,” and with grasp it was “hand.” In addition, the results showed that the degree of formality of these synonyms was at a low level since they frequently occurred in fiction. It can be seen from the study that these three verb synonyms may be substitutable only in certain contexts. Thus, carefully using these English synonyms in appropriate contexts is necessary, especially for L2 English learners.