A. D. SHEFFIELD, 1938

4. Looking beyond normal limits

In looking for a desired word one can look beyond the limits of the synonym group which one naturally first consults. That group, one should remember, is a part-of-speech grouping as well as a core-sense grouping. Its words are a noun list or an adjective list, and so forth. One looks there first because one commonly starts with some grammatical pattern of phrase in which the wished-for word should fit. Thus one looks under perplexed for an adjective to describe somebody as deeply hesitant over a decision in a baffling situation. The right word for this may not appear among the adjectives doubtful, puzzled, nonplussed, and so on; but by turning to the noun list under perplexity one will find quandary, with which, of course, one can either form an adjective phrase, or re-form the sentence pattern that one began with. So with the nouns probity, integrity, one may supply adjective and adverb equivalents (a man of probity, acting with integrity) that bring in elements of by-sense and feeling which are missing in the list under upright.

The worker with words may note with profit that "Basic English", the system of 850 words scientifically chosen to compose an international language, gets its surprising efficiency -- quite adequate for all ordinary communication -- from this possibility of improvising phrase-equivalents for adjectives and verbs. With only sixteen verbs (be, do, have, get, keep, give, take, come, go, let, make, pit, seem, say, see, send), it makes thousands of good verb-substitutes, With put alone it can, instead of ask, kill, move, terminate, correct, inform, give us put a question, put to death, put in motion, put an end to, put right, "put (him) wise" - all with nouns or adjectives. In addition, these "operator verbs" combine with "directive" particles (at, by, down, in, off, on, out, up, with, and so forth), to give us pithy idioms which do expressive duty as verbs. Thus, put away (childish things), put forward (a suggestion), put (work) before (play), "put over" (a stratagem), put (a boy) up to (mischief), put up with (an annoyance). The present book includes such idioms in its synonym lists, since they are really on a par with notional words as units of expression. And it marks the peculiar importance of the 850 "Basic" words by printing them in BOLD FACE.

Another source for the word one is seeking may be among the antonyms  of the word group one is consulting. That is, we can get a new by-sense for the common idea in sympathetic, pitying, compassionate, commiserative by using a negative with its opposite, e.g.  - not indifferent, far from ruthless. Notice here that for many ideas there are two sets of antonyms: one expressing the simple negative of lack or contradiction, the other expressing what is negatively opposite or contrary. Thus the idea of "solicitude shown for the misfortune of another" has one contrasting negative in the lack of such feeling and another in the extreme opposite, or "a brutal callousness towards others in misfortune." As core-senses, these can be viewed as falling at plus, zero, and minus points along a scale; thus -