All languages tend to clear themselves of synonyms as
intellectual culture advances, the superfluous words
being taken up and appropriated by new shades and
combinations of thought evolved in the progress of
society. --De Quincey.
His name has thus become, throughout all civilized
countries, a synonym for probity and philanthropy.
--Macaulay.
In popular literary acceptation, and as employed in
special dictionaries of such words, synonyms are words
sufficiently alike in general signification to be
liable to be confounded, but yet so different in
special definition as to require to be distinguished.
--G. P. Marsh.