A corpus-based study of the near-synonyms: beautiful, attractive, and gorgeous

This corpus-based study aims to investigate three near-synonyms—beautiful, attractive, and gorgeous—regarding their distribution across genres and their noun and adverb collocations in relation to semantic preference. Data were drawn from two well-known online dictionaries and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings reveal that "beautiful" and "gorgeous" predominantly occur in spoken genres (e.g., TV and movie, subtitles, fiction, and spoken), while "attractive" is more prevalent in written genres (e.g., magazines and blogs). Interestingly, the analysis demonstrated that while all three adjectives shared some noun collocates and semantic preferences related to humans and settings, "attractive" had broader usage, extending into business fields. The similarities and differences in meanings and semantic fields suggest that they are more accurately classified as near-synonyms, which are not entirely interchangeable. The comprehensive investigation provides valuable insights for EFL instruction, emphasizing the importance of utilizing multiple resources to discern subtle differences among near-synonyms and promote their effective use in communication.