Synonyms in English paraphrasing

A synonym is not a word that means roughly the same thing. It is a word you can put in this sentence, in this position, without changing what the sentence claims. That last part is what makes synonym work harder than it looks: “important” and “vital” sit in the same dictionary entry and make different claims. If the prompt says a policy is important and you write that it is vital, you have committed the rest of your essay to defending something the prompt never said.

This is why word lists fail. A list gives you words that are related; it cannot tell you whether the one you picked fits the slot you are putting it in. Two things decide that. Strength is how much the word claims — “dislike”, “oppose” and “condemn” run from mild to severe and are not interchangeable. Company is what the word is allowed to stand next to: you make a decision and you reach a conclusion, and crossing the two produces English that is grammatical and that nobody writes.

The practical consequence runs against instinct. You should swap fewer words, more carefully, than you want to. A response that replaces four content words accurately reads better than one that replaces nine and gets two of them wrong — because the two wrong ones are the ones the examiner notices, and they are noticed as errors rather than as ambition.

Lexical Resource does not count unusual words. It assesses range, precision and control — whether you have enough words to say what you mean, whether the ones you chose mean it, and whether you can handle the grammar they bring with them. A rare word used wrongly lowers all three at once, which is why reaching for the most impressive available synonym is the most reliable way to lose marks on the criterion it was meant to raise.

There is a second, quieter cost. Words copied straight from the prompt are not counted as your language, so an introduction that reuses the prompt’s nouns has produced fewer words for the examiner to assess than it appears to. The sentence looks full and is, for scoring purposes, half empty — and it is the first sentence the examiner reads.

What moved: parents → mothers and fathers · fundamental → crucial · bringing up → raising · indispensable → essential · society → community

Why this works: Five swaps and not one change of claim. The one worth copying is “bring up” → “raise”: replacing a phrasal verb with a single verb is the cheapest way to lift the register of a whole sentence.

What moved: consumption → intake · dramatically affects → has a drastic impact on · oceans → seas · balance → equilibrium

Why this works: The adverb became an adjective inside a noun phrase. When a verb resists a synonym, turn the verb into a noun and give the noun the adjective — “dramatically affects” → “has a drastic impact on”.

What moved: bullying → harassment at school · jeopardises → threatens · children’s → young people’s · wellbeing → welfare · fosters → reinforces · negative → harmful · communities → society

Why this works: Seven swaps. Note “fosters” → “reinforces” and not “enhances”: “enhance” means to improve something, so “enhances harmful values” would say the values got better.