desynonymize

English

Etymology

de- +‎ synonymize

Verb

desynonymize (third-person singular simple present desynonymizes, present participle desynonymizing, simple past and past participle desynonymized)

1. To deprive of synonymous character; to cause no longer to be synonyms.
   • 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “The lyrical ballads with the preface—Mr. [William] Wordsworth’s earlier poems—On fancy and imagination—The investigation of the distinction important to the fine arts”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume I, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, page 87:

     It is not, I own, easy to conceive a more opposite translation of the Greek Phantasia, than the Latin Imaginatio; but it is equally true that in all societies there exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious good sense working progressively to desynonymize those words originally of the same meaning, which the conflux of dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous languages, as the Greek and German: […]

References

“desynonymize”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.