A good word for a group of synonyms?

Is there a specific word that denotes a group of synonyms? I thought semantic field worked, but then I read that this just pertains to discernible words in a text/discourse that can be semantically related?

Synonym field? Synonym group?

Pretty sure there is a specific word I am looking for here


Solution 1:

I think the most common term for this is synonym cluster. Here are some examples from Google Books:

  • A synonym cluster is a group of words that have similar meanings. The following four synonym clusters contain 20 vocabulary words. [link]
  • Synonym coding uses a synonym list instead of wordlist. [sic] So, in synonym code, Ds represents the synonym dictionary. The ithsynonym cluster is noted [sic] by Syni. [link]
  • A 2nd study of 479 common terms grouped into 133 synonym clusters revealed the same structure in 2 samples of self-ratings and in 2 samples of peer ratings. [link]

I think the motivation behind cluster as opposed to something like group or field is that it captures the idea that the synonyms are not usually exact synonyms, and the cluster is therefore not precise: different words in the cluster may be more or less closely synonymous, and the cluster will generally have a fuzzy boundary.