Analyze and comment, with a diagram, on the italicized words increase, extend and expand in the following three sentences based on the concept of discrimination of synonyms.
[a] The company has decided to increase its sales by ten per cent next year.
[b] The owner of the restaurant is going to extend the kitchen by ten feet this year.
[c] The metal will expand if heated.
Synonyms may differ in the range and intensity of meaning. Some words have a wider range of meaning than others. Increase, extend and expand share a general sense but have different implications. Each of the three terms expresses a different kind of enlargement. This can be illustrated by the following graphs.
