Functional linguist, Firth and his followers believe that meaning of a word is specified by its distribution in a number of uses through collocations. However, this distributed view of meaning challenges dictionary definitions based on sense relations. This small corpus based study of three adjacent synonym adjectives and nouns was designed to test these positions empirically. Sketch Engine was used for analysis of data taken from BNC. Collocations were sorted by MI (f>3) and first 100 collocates from the MI lists were selected as random samples for each adjective node. The results of the focused analysis based on top 20 collocates from these samples were compared with the relevant entries in the Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English for Advanced Learners. The findings partially supported the position of Firth and tended to be closer to Halliday’s lexico-grammar, and cognitive linguistics. The study has important implications for lexicographers, Pakistani teachers of English, and material developers.