A corpus-based analysis of English synonyms: excellent, outstanding, superb

This study examines three synonyms, excellent, outstanding, and superb, using two criteria: collocations and degrees of formality. The information for the three synonyms is derived from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Macmillan Dictionary, and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results show that these three synonyms differ based on previously mentioned criteria. In terms of definition, excellent and superb mean extremely good in general, whereas outstanding may have a more specific meaning associated with action and money. Determined by frequency and MI value, the majority of noun collocates of excellent and superb are associated with broader and more general themes, whereas the majority of noun collocates of outstanding are associated with a narrower meaning. Outstanding appears to be the most formal word, as it appears with the highest frequency in academic texts, whereas superb appears to be the least formal word, as its frequency is highest in informal genres, i.e., spoken English and TV/movie subtitles. As a result, all three synonyms are considered loose synonyms because they cannot be substituted for each other in all contexts. This corpus-based study provides pedagogical implications in addition to lexical knowledge about synonyms. Because corpora can provide far more insightful lexical knowledge about synonyms than dictionaries, this may encourage L2 learners to use corpora, in addition to dictionaries, when studying vocabulary.