Synonymy in the terminology of winter sports: justified regularity or violation of terminology requirements?

Relevance. The issue of synonymy as a semantic phenomenon in branch terminology is one of the most relevant, since until then researchers adhere to different points of view regarding the typology of equivalent nominations and the assessment of the quality of sets of terms that contain special units that do not meet the requirements of terminology science.The purpose of the study is to consider the formal, semantic, quantitative characteristics of equivalent special units of winter sports disciplinesResearch methods: semantic, definitional, quantitative, descriptive, comparative types of analysis.Results. On the example of the corpus of terms of winter sports (figure skating, bobsleigh, curling, biathlon) with a volume of 953 units, their compliance with the terminological requirement not to have synonyms is considered. Various types of synonymous units, their formal, quantitative and semantic characteristics are described. The data testifying to the spread of the phenomenon under consideration in the terminology of the professional spheres are given: the number of equivalent units varies in these terminologies from 4.45% to 12.04%.The series of synonymous units contain from two to three elements, the most common are doublet and elliptic types of synonyms. Synonymy of special units is assessed as a negative phenomenon, since it causes quantitative redundancy of special vocabulary and can lead to inaccuracies in business communication due to the occurrence of semantic shifts in synonymous categories that are not recorded in a timely manner by special lexicography.The synonymous series of special nominations is the basis that can give the most motivated and convenient terms in various conditions of communication, provided that systematic normalizing activities based on the semantics of special units, fixing their definitions in terminographic sources, unification and standardization work carried out by specialists of the professional sphere with the involvement of linguists-terminologists.