[Vocabulary] Citizens - synonym

[barnej0096]

What's the synonym for "citizens"? I thought about "inhabitants" but I'm not sure whether it's the same.

 

[Rover_KE]

Sorry - I deleted this post by mistake. 5jj

 

[5jj]

'Inhabitants' is not an exact synonym. I am an inhabitant of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but I am a British citizen.

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

I don't think that there is a satisfactory one-word synonym for "citizens"; it calls for more of an explanation.

The best I can think of is "nationals". The definition of citizen is "A legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized". A native is a national and once a non-native has been naturalized he becomes one.

 

[tzfujimino]

Hello.
I think the link Rover provided in post #2 is this: http://www.wordreference.com/thesaurus/citizen
(Thank God I remembered 'wordreference' was written on the web page.)

:-D

 

[5jj]

Thanks, tzfujomino, and apologies again to Rover.

ps: 'Subject' is a very close synonym for 'citizen for many purposes, in my opinion..

 

[emsr2d2]

'Inhabitants' is not an exact synonym. I am an inhabitant of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but I am a British citizen.

And yet, if you have a Czech resident's card, you might be considered a citizen of the Czech Republic but still a British national. The words "citizen(ship)" and "nationality" mean different things in different English dialects.

 

[Raymott]

What's the synonym for "citizens"? I thought about "inhabitants" but I'm not sure whether it's the same.

Your question is wrongly put. By asking about "the synonym", you are assuming (or asserting) that there is one, and only one, and that we should know it. A better question would be "What is a synonym for 'citizens' ..." and then adding the reason that 'citizens' doesn't work for your purposes, and giving relevant information about the type of word you want. Here are some synonyms:
http://thesaurus.com/browse/citizen

By the way, synonyms are not words that mean the same. They are words with similar meanings, which might be completely inappropriate in the wrong context.

 

[5jj]

Most dictionaries define synonym as a word having the same, or nearly the same meaning. I think that's a bit more than 'similar'.

 

[Raymott]

Most dictionaries define synonym as a word having the same, or nearly the same meaning. I think that's a bit more than 'similar'.

Yes, 'synonym' is used in different ways. The main problem, as I see it, is that thesauruses all use the term 'synonym' to mean a word with a similar meaning in a certain context. By 'similar', I mean "alike but not identical", which I think means almost the same as "nearly the same" - depending on how you define 'almost' and 'nearly'. Of course, two words with completely identical meanings are also synonyms; I wasn't arguing against that.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/similar

Thesauruses would be very much shorter if they only listed synonyms in your sense. The link I posted above lists 'voter' and 'aborigine' as synonyms of 'citizen'. I'm sure you would agree that they don't mean the same. I'd hesitate to say that they mean "nearly the same".
But who should know what a synonym is if the editor of a thesaurus doesn't - including those who contribute to the thesauruses that are included in the same dictionaries which you say define 'synonym' differently.
Wikipedia includes similarity of meaning: "Synonyms ... are words with the same or similar meanings"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym
There are very few 'interchangeable' words in the language; the context is always relevant.

 

[SoothingDave]

Citizens can vote.

 

[Raymott]

Citizens can vote.

Not all citizens can vote. In Australia, you have to be 18 or over, just to mention one qualification. That leaves millions(?) of citizens here who are not voters.

 

[SoothingDave]

Right, I wasn't thinking of minors, but rather of distinctions between "citizen" and "inhabitant."

Legal residents who are not citizens can not vote, serve on juries, or get drafted into the military.

 

[Raymott]

Right, I wasn't thinking of minors, but rather of distinctions between "citizen" and "inhabitant."

Ah, I was wondering what point you were making. Thanks.
But this illustrates my concern about the whole synonym business. Learners are unlikely to be thinking of all possible contexts when they choose a word from a list of synonyms.