Synonyms
A synonym is a word or phrase with a meaning that is the same as, or very similar to, another word or phrase. Examples of synonyms include:
- studious, intellectual, scholarly
- investigation, experiment, analysis
- interpret, understand, comprehend
A search of a catalogue, database or the Internet will only return results based on the terms which have been defined by you as the user. This means that useful information may be missed because different words were used in some research. Therefore, an effective search should always consider synonyms. For example, the following research topic is reconsidered:
Cheating in exams at Universities
The three identified concepts (cheating, exams and universities) can each have a number of synonyms or related terms. These are summarised below:
| Keyword | Synonyms |
cheat |
plagiarism, copying
|
exams
|
test, assessment
|
university
|
higher education, academia
|
Boolean operators can be used to combine these terms in a search. This is discussed in full later.
