Synonyms

Question

Hello,I had to decide myself wheather these  words : atrocity, slaughter, massacre, cruelty, villainy are synonyms or not. All of them are the result of  villainy I think.I know that  the slaughter, and the massacre are synomyms but as atrocity is a cruel act and not only the killing of people can it be used instead of them, because they mean the same, don`t they? isn`t it a mistake to say : 'nobody survived the atrocity' just like to say 'nobody survived the massacre?' when using  the 'atrocity' should it be concretized what kind of violent act took place?  Can I say either the cruelty or the shame of atrocity/villainy?  I really don`t know  how to use them and their synonyms.Could you please help?

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

I wouldn't say all these words are synonyms of each other, if that's your basic question.

Clive

Tinyteflteacher · Answer

As well as wondering if they are synonyms, you also need to think about how frequently they are used, and in what typical situations.
'Villainy' sounds really old-fashioned to me - I would never use it unless I was being over-dramatic for comic purposes.

'Cruelty' could be for much smaller acts (such as children pulling legs of flies) whereas 'atrocity' would never be used in this situation.
Have you tried looking at corpus/concordance data? You go to the concordance website, type in the word you want to see, and it will find you lots of examples which you can compare. This might give you a better idea of how to use the expressions.

Anonymous · Answer

Hello,

Thank you so much. I didn`t know anything about this site. This is exactly what I needed.

Nina

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