Lexical items have been regarded as the most salient components of meaning in any meaningful utterance. From among millions of English words, those sharing some formal, functional, or semantic characteristics (e.g., historic/historical, economic/economical, etc.) seem to be more challenging for EFL/ESL learners to learn than other words. Such similar lexical items have come to be known as -synforms —a coinage by Laufer (1983)—in the literature. Faced with such words, learners generally experience difficulty to distinguish between the delicate shades of meaning conveyed by each member of such pairs. Evidence indicates that there is some relationship between language proficiency level and the amount of confusion experienced by learners.

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