Several influential factor analysis studies have shown that the three most important, largely independent, dimensions of word meaning are valence (positiveness-negativeness/pleasuredispleasure), arousal (active-passive), and dominance (dominant-submissive) (Osgood et al., 1957;Russell, 1980Russell, , 2003.
1 when comparing the meanings of two words, we can compare their degrees of valence, arousal, or domi-nance.