5. Hyponymy and Paronymy

Hyponymy (J. Lyons's term) is a paradigmatic relation of sense between a more specific, or subordinate lexeme, and a more general, or superordinate, lexeme, for example cow is a hyponym of animal rose is a hyponym offlower, and so on (honesty: virtue, buy :get, crimson : red). And further, .since rose, tulip, daffodil, etc. each is a hyponym of flower they are co-hyponyms of the same lexeme. The upper term is the superordinate lexeme.

The relationship between the lexemes can be shown as a tree dia­gram, where the more general term is placed at the top, and the more specific terms are placed underneath.

red
scarlet	vermilion	crimson

vegetable
potato	cabbage	carrot

Hyponym (Greek "under" + "name") is a word the meaning of which may be said to be included in that of another word. In the two examples above, the more specific words (in the bottom line) are co-hyponyms of the more general words (in the top line) which are said to be superordinate to their hyponyms. Thus semantic relationship of inclusion is the main feature of hyponymic hierarchical structures. Hyponymy is the core relationship within a dictionary; it expresses basic meaning relationships in the lexicon.

Paronyms are words that are kindred both in sound form and meaning and therefore liable to be mixed but in fact different in meaning and usage and therefore only mistakenly interchanged. This is the case with the verbs to affect ("to influence") and to effect ("to bring about, to result in"); with prosecute and persecute; policy and politics; moral and morale; respectfullyand respectively; human and humane; conscience, conscious, consciousness and conscientious.

(To choose the right word, make use of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler.)