Synonyms and Antonyms Synonym is a tricky word to spell but has a simple meaning. A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase. For example:  small and little are synonyms as they have the same meaning. Unsurprisingly the word comes from Ancient Greek, with ‘syn’ meaning ‘with’ and ‘onoma’ meaning ‘name’. Of course the English language has many examples of synonyms, with a typical thesaurus listing as many as 24 000! An antonym is simply a word that means the opposite of another word. For example:  fast and slow are antonyms as they have opposite meanings. The ‘ant’ part of the word comes from the Greek word, ‘anti’, meaning opposite. We have just published two great sets of worksheets with plenty of activities including matching words, dictionary work and writing sentences. Discussing various synonyms and antonyms with children can help them elicit slight differences in meaning and when one word might be better to use than another. Why not take a look at both our synonym and antonym worksheets which can be found in our Vocabulary category. Go to synonyms and antonyms