A Chinese synonym, 同義詞 (tóngyìcí), is a word whose meaning matches or comes close to another's, and Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary says the exact kind is very rare. Most pairs are near-synonyms that differ in degree, colour or style. We tested how well a fluent ear for those differences agrees with the dictionary. One of our reviewers marked 23 pairs on a 229-word learner's list as poor fits, then looked up each word in the ministry's 《國語辭典簡編本》. Its own definitions overturned or weakened 13 of the 23 flags. The same dictionary often files a synonym under one numbered sense of a word, though not every time.
The ministry's dictionary defines a perfect synonym and calls such pairs rare
The ministry's revised dictionary, the 《重編國語辭典修訂本》, defines the term in its entry 同義詞. Words are synonyms when they are 「語義相同或相近的語詞」. Only the fully identical ones are 等義詞 (děngyìcí), which match in sense and also 「在感情色彩或風格特點上亦無差別」, showing no difference in feeling or style.
The entry gives two examples, 元音 and 母音 for a vowel, and 番薯 and 地瓜 for the sweet potato, and then adds 「此類例子極少」: cases like these are very few. Everything else is a 近義詞 (jìnyìcí), a near-synonym whose 「程度、色彩、風格等有別」, with 贊成 and 同意 as the instance. The matching entry for an antonym is short: 「意義相反的詞」, words of opposite meaning.
On our reading, a pair that differs only in how formal it sounds already falls short, because style is one of the things a 等義詞 may not differ in.
Sense numbers index some synonym lists and leave others unmarked
Entries in the 簡編本 carry two lists, 相似詞 for similar words and 相反詞 for opposites. Where a word has several senses, the lists often carry the number of the sense they belong to. 喜歡 has two senses, the first 「快樂、高興」 (glad) and the second 「喜愛」 (to be fond of), and both lists are marked 2. The similar words 喜好、喜愛、愛好 are offered for liking something, never for being glad. 美味 does the same with one list: its single similar word is 「2. 可口」, tied to the adjective sense, and it lists no opposite at all.
The numbering is not universal. 驕傲 (jiāo'ào) has two senses of opposite tone, 「傲慢自大」 (arrogant) and 「自豪」 (proud of something). Its lists, 高傲 and 謙虛、謙遜, carry no number, and by meaning they fit only the first. 開始 has three senses and six opposites, none numbered.
Five synonym steps redefine leisure as satisfaction on a list without sense labels
A word list without sense numbers leaves the sense to the reader, and that is how our synonym and antonym lookup works. Its revision of 3 November 2026 holds 229 words written by this site, with 442 synonym chips and 443 antonym chips. Four polysemous words, among them 骄傲, carry a sense note. Chips that are entries themselves can be clicked.
To show what unlabelled senses do, we followed every clickable synonym chip, breadth first, from each of the 229 words on the revised data. No word is more than five steps from where it starts, and one of the two five-step chains is 清闲→悠闲→安逸→舒适→惬意→满意 (qīngxián to mǎnyì). The dictionary defines 清閒 as 「清靜閒適」, quiet and at leisure, and 愜意 as 「滿意、舒適」. So the last step is one its own definition supports, yet the chain ends on "satisfied", a word that on our reading shares no sense with the start. 热烈 reaches 15 words, the most of any entry; the median is 2. No chain from any of the 229 words reached that word's own antonym. This is a demonstration on one small list, and we do not claim it as a new finding about thesauruses.
Until 3 November 2026 the list carried 457 synonym and 450 antonym chips. It opposed 美味 to 难闻, a word about smell, and 肥沃 to 干旱, which is about rainfall. Its Traditional view also wrote 濕潤 beside 潮溼, one character in two forms on one page. The revision removed those pairs and follows the dictionary's head forms.
Dictionary definitions gloss many suspect pairs back together
The 23 flags came first, written down before any entry was opened, and covered pairs that seemed to differ in word class, tone or domain. The dictionary's own wording then joined many of them. It defines 嚴厲 as 「嚴格、不寬容」, which ties it to 严格. It defines 開端 by 開始, and it lists 愛好 among the similar words of 喜歡. An earlier reader's doubts fared no better: the 簡編本 defines 確實 as 「真實」.
The flags that survived show what a definition can settle. 木訥 is 「性情樸實，不善言詞」, a matter of temperament and few words, which sits poorly beside slowness of mind. 荒蕪 is land 「因無人管理而雜草叢生」, overgrown for want of care, which is a different thing from poor soil. The revision of 3 November 2026 took both pairs off our list.
We read this as one reviewer's test on one list, and we draw no rule about the language from it. What it does show is that a confident sense of misfit and a dictionary's definitions part company often, and that the entry is a cheaper check than the ear.
溼, 汙 and 彆 head the Taiwan dictionary's entries for three everyday words
Simplified script writes 湿润, 污秽 and 别扭, and anyone converting them to Traditional has to choose a form. The 簡編本 heads its entries 溼潤, defined 「潮溼而潤澤」, and 汙穢, and 彆扭. On 3 November 2026 a search for 濕潤, 污穢 or 別扭 found no entry. For the first two the site suggested the head form; for 別扭 it suggested nothing.
The same check runs the other way for 凶惡, which is the head, while a search for 兇惡 finds no entry and points to 凶惡. We make no claim about which form other dictionaries or other places prefer, and the wider problem of one Simplified character standing for several Traditional ones is in our guide to why conversion is not a swap.
A no-derivatives licence confines the ministry's lists to brief quotation
The ministry publishes its dictionaries under a Creative Commons BY-ND 3.0 Taiwan licence, which allows copying with credit but no altered versions. The usage notes for the 簡編本 go further and bar converting its entries 「或轉為簡化字」, into simplified characters. Its similar-word and opposite lists can therefore be quoted with credit, but not rewritten into simplified characters, and every dictionary quotation here is short, verbatim and Traditional.
The licence page gives the edition numbers we read: 2014_20260929 for the 簡編本 and 2015_20260929 for the 重編本, while the 簡編本 site's own header says 2021. Entries are revised between editions, so a list or a definition quoted here may read differently later. Credit: 中華民國教育部（Ministry of Education, R.O.C.）。《國語辭典簡編本》（版本編號：2014_20260929）網址： http://dict.concised.moe.edu.tw/; 中華民國教育部（Ministry of Education, R.O.C.）。《重編國語辭典修訂本》（版本編號：2015_20260929）網址： http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/.
