From the Dictionary to the Corpus: Synonyms and Variants of Ganarse la vida in Contemporary Spanish

Authors

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6018/ER.661841
Keywords: Phraseology, Synonymy, Variation, Spanish, Corpus linguistics

Abstract

Linguistic research requires comprehensive and representative resources to accurately reflect the phenomena under analysis. This study explores the synonyms and phraseological variants of the Spanish expression ganarse la vida (make a living). In a first phase, the synonymic content of ganarse la vida is examined through a selection of 17 dictionaries of various types, including synonym dictionaries, thesauri, and both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. In a second phase, after outlining the concept of phraseological variation, the phenomenon is illustrated using the Sketch Engine tool and the esTenTen18 corpus. The results point to a broad set of synonymous and variant expressions whose frequency and distribution support their inclusion in the development of linguistic and lexicographic resources.

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Author Biography

Pedro Mogorrón Huerta, Universidad de Alicante

Director of the FRASYTRAM research group (Phraseology and Multilingual Translation) since 2006.
He has published over 100 publications, many of which are in journals and publishers recognized by the Scholar Publishing Index (SPI).
He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Paris 13, Paris Marne-la-Vallée, Paris-Ivry, Paris-Diderot, the Pedagogical University of Krakow, the University of Antananarivo, the University of Palma, etc.

Lines of work and research
- Phraseology and phraseological translation
- Terminology and specialized translation
- Audiovisual translation
- Humanistic-literary translation (literary, cultural, journalistic fields)
- Machine translation.

References

Bally, Ch. ([1909] 1951). Traite de Stylistique francaise. Librairie C. Kincksiek.

Gadget, Françoise. (2003). La variation sociale en français. París & Gap: Ophrys.

García Hernández, B. (1997). Sinonimia y diferencia de significado. Revista Española de Lingüística, 27(1), 1-32.

Kleiber, G. (2009). La synonymie-“identité de sens” n’est pas un mythe. Pratiques Linguistique, littérature, didactique, 141-142, 9-25. https://doi.org/10.4000/pratiques.1262

Martin, R. (1976). Inférence, antonymie et paraphrase, Klincksieck.

Mogorrón, P. (2010). Analyse du figement et de ses possibles variations dans les constructions verbales espagnoles. Linguisticae Investigationes, XXXIII (1), 86-151. https://doi.org/10.1075/li.33.1.05mog

Mogorrón Huerta, P. (2019). Les phrasèmes et les outils lexicographiques des traducteurs. PHRASIS Rivista di sutu fraseologici e paremiologici, 3, 12-37.

Mogorrón Huerta, P. (2020). Análisis multidisciplinar del fenómeno de la variación fraseológica en traducción e interpretación. MonTI Special Issue, 6, 36-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/MonTI.2020.ne6.1

Mogorrón, P., Labrada Hernández, G. y Nieto Martín, G. V. (2022). Mismas expresiones distintos significados. Revista Nebrija De Lingüística Aplicada a La Enseñanza De Lenguas, 16(32), 40–57. https://doi.org/10.26378/rnlael1632479

Published
07-01-2026
How to Cite
Mogorrón Huerta, P. (2026). From the Dictionary to the Corpus: Synonyms and Variants of Ganarse la vida in Contemporary Spanish. Estudios Románicos, 35. https://doi.org/10.6018/ER.661841