L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #139 Context Menu: word information group: Sense (and nyms)

MJ. Smith

Another tip of the day (TOTD) series for Logos/Verbum 10. They will be short and often drawn from forum posts. Feel free to ask questions and/or suggest forum posts you'd like to see included. Adding comments about the behavior on mobile and web apps would be appreciated by your fellow forumites. A search for "L/V 10+ Tip of the Day site:community.logos.com" on Google should bring the tips up as should this Reading List within the application.

This tip is inspired by the forum post: L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #138 Context Menu: word information group: Strong's & Louw-Nida - Logos Forums

There are, for my purposes, three kinds of definitions:

1. A dictionary definition which uses words to describe the meaning of another word. An example: a lamb is a young sheep.
2. A definition by distinctive attributes, often shown as a table; An example: a ewe is a female adult sheep; a ram is a male adult sheep
3. A definition by relationship to other words (-nyms) as is used in the Bible Sense Lexicon. (see L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #133 Keyboard shortcut/mouse navigation of Bible Sense Lexicon - Logos Forums)

Some "nyms" you are familar with outside the Bible Sense Lexicon:

• synonym - a word that in some context can replace the current word in a sentence without changing the meaning
• antonym - a word that in some context can replace the current word in a sentence to give the opposite meaning
• homonym - to different words that sound the same (sail, sale); note that some people consider the different senses of a polysemous words to be homonyms.
• contronym - a polysemous word in which one sense is an antonym to another sense (dust - to remove dust from furniture, to add dust (powered sugar) to a cake)
• heteronym - words that are written identically (homographs) but pronounced differently with different meaning e.g. wind, bow

For synonyms Logos offers some specific resources:

• Trench, Richard Chenevix. Synonyms of the New Testament. London: Macmillan and Co., 1880.
• Girdlestone, Robert Baker. Synonyms of the Old Testament: Their Bearing on Christian Doctrine. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1998.
• Custer, Stewart. A Treasury of New Testament Synonyms. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1975.

Some "nyms" one knows from the relationship section of the Bible Sense Lexicon:

• hypernym - the class word in a "kind of" relationship (dog is a kind of canine)
• hyponym - the instance word in a "kind of" relationship (dog is a kind of canine)
• meronym - the part in a "part of" relationship (tire is a part of a truck)
• holonym - the whole in a "part of" relationship (tire is a part of a truck)
• troponym - the style part of the relationship of doing something in a particular style (lisp is a troponym of speak)
• pertainym - an adjective that classifies its noun (musical instrument)
• entailment (not a nym) - a prerequisite for the act (sleep is entailed by snore)

One other critical relationship:

• homograph - two or more words that look the same when written but have separate meanings and eymology (go the verb and go the board game)

The Bible Sense Lexicon defines a meaning by placing it in the matrix of other words; the meaning may be expressed by a single word or a word and its synonyms. To access it through the Context Menu we use the familiar steps:

1. select the word and right-click to open the Context Menu
2. select the sense tab on the left
3. select the Bible search action on the right. [The Bible Sense Lexicon is illustrated below.]

Notice that the search on the sense includes "man of god" when used as a synonym for prophet.

The Bible Sense Lexicon option opens in a floating panel. Under Lemmas, synonyms are shown; other relationships are shown in the diagram and in the Relationships section. Note that Louw-Nida semantic domains provide additional related information.

Pound the following into your head:

• use the manuscript form when you are interested in the specific grammatical form of the word
• use the lemma when you are interested in the word itself regardless of form
• use the root when you are interested in a group of words related etymologically
• use the sense when you are interested in the meaning of a group of words