Preferred synonyms for each noun of 279 synonym pairs

Fifty subjects produced the noun they thought closest in meaning to each of 279 nouns. A further 50 subjects performed the same task for the synonyms used in a previous rating task for each of the 279 nouns. The preferred synonym, number of subjects giving it and the number giving the previously used synonym are provided. The ratings from the previous task were correlated with the number of subjects giving the previously used synonym. Though the correlations were significant, they accounted for less than 15 per cent of the variance. Possible uses of the norms are briefly discussed.