Synonymous Plagiarism

Question

Hi, my professor told me I was using synonymous plagiarism. What does this mean? I submitted my paper through the schools plagiarism checker (as required) and received a 0% similarity and plagiarism. Just an answer to this would be great!

Answer 1

Hello Hope,

Your professor is probably referring to the use of wordage in which you changed some of the words using synonyms for some of the words. A simple example of this would be:

Original Verbiage: an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency.

A synonymous version would be: a dependency to the utilization of alcoholic liquor or the neurosis and obsessive behavior resulting from alcohol addiction

While the wordage is different, technically it means the same thing as the original text and would need to be in-text cited and references appropriately.

Definition of alcoholism | Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Www.Dictionary.Com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/alcoholism?s=t

Hope that helps!

Krystale