The article traces the phenomenon of synonymy and variants in the Ukrainian forestry terminology, reveals the specificity of the synonymy terms and the terms variants representation in “The Russian-Ukrainian dictionary of forestry terms” (1980), the first academic lexicographical forestry edition. The lexicographers (M.Galych, L. Polyuga, S. Postrygan’, S. Stoiko, N. Shylo) give Ukrainian corresponding synonyms and variants to the Russian terms.
In the article the differences between synonymous terms and term variants are identified. The author points out at the possibility to choose the most appropriate term that adequately renders the sense of a notion and fits phonetic, lexical, grammatical, word-formative Ukrainian terminology peculiarities.
It is clarified that the lexicographers of “The Russian-Ukrainian dictionary of forestry terms”, while proposing several Ukrainian correspondences to the Russian terms, create terminological grounds for choosing the most appropriate term, which can express all the aspects of a certain notion, lexical and grammatical peculiarities of terminology as a whole, and forestry terminology in particular. The scientific analysis of the synonyms of this dictionary allowed to understand the complex processes of the forestry terminology formation, fostering the unification and codification of the Ukrainian forestry terminology at the present stage.
In the Ukrainian forestry terms system several types of synonyms are distinguished: lexical, word-forming and syntactical.
Lexical synonyms are different words with the same or nearly the same meaning. Lexical synonymous pairs are divided into two groups: borrowed terms, i.e. Ukrainian correspondences, and Ukrainian synonymous terms. The analysis shows that “Russian-Ukrainian dictionary of forestry terms” contains few borrowed synonymous terms of non-Slavic origin, while the modern lexicographical editions have a great number of such terms. Some Ukrainian synonymous correspondences, listed in the dictionaries, differ in their semantics that is why they cannot be used as synonyms. So, the possibility to choose the best correspondence of the listed Ukrainian synonyms is grounded.
Word-forming synonyms are the words with the same or nearly the same meaning but different on the word building level. They are divided into one-root synonyms which have the common root but different affixes, and hetero-root synonyms, different words with the same meaning.
Syntactic synonyms are different linguistic structures, including word combinations and synonyms on different levels - lexical units functioning on lexical and syntactical levels. Among them we differentiate the synonymous pairs, represented by a simple-stem word – a word combination and an abbreviation – a word combination.
The types of forestry terms variants are also identified and described, namely, phonetic-phonemic, accentual, word-formative, morphological, syntactical.
The research of the phenomena of synonymy and variants fosters the unification, standardization and codification of the Ukrainian forestry terminology. The comparison of the Ukrainian forestry terminology with the Russian one helps to realize the necessity to create Ukrainian terms according to its own word-forming models, and find out the ways to decrease Russian language influence on the terms formation processes in the Ukrainian language.