Reported a systematic investigation of the most popular synonym for each of 279 nouns in a test with 50 Ss drawn from a variety of college departments. A further 50 Ss performed the same task for the synonyms used in a previous rating task devised by the present authors (see PA; Vol 67:3240) for each of the 279 nouns. The preferred synonym, number of Ss giving it, and the number giving the previously used synonym are provided. The ratings from the previous task were correlated with the number of Ss giving the previously used synonym. Though the correlations were significant, they accounted for less than 15{\%} of the variance. The present data should be of value in a number of tasks investigating perception, memory, and judgment in relation to meaning, enabling control of both accessibility of a synonym and rated similarity.
Below you will find a list of nouns; some of these can also be verbs but please treat them all as nouns. Please go through the list and write beside each one the noun you think is closest in meaning to it. If you cannot think of any acceptable synonym, then indicate by a dash. Do not spend too long on any single word. Please indicate below if English is not your first language. If you did a similar task last year judging how close in meaning pairs of synonyms were please indicate: YES/NO
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