synonym

A synonym is a word that means the same, or nearly the same, as another — big and large, frugal and thrifty. On the ASVAB the idea matters as a question format before it matters as vocabulary: Word Knowledge asks either for the choice that means most nearly the same as the stem word, or for the one that means the opposite, and both live in the same subtest.

That mix is where points are lost. Reading the word most nearly and then answering the opposite turns a word you knew into a wrong answer, so read the stem's last few words before you look at the choices.

Synonyms also work as eliminators. When two choices mean nearly the same thing they are almost always both wrong, because a question cannot have two right answers — unless it asked for the opposite, in which case both are wrong for the other reason. Near-synonyms are what the distractors are made of; the keyed answer is usually the choice carrying a shade the others do not.