A mechanism is provided in a data processing system having a processor and a memory storing instructions for implementing a natural language processing engine, a store of semantic types, and a store of units, conversions among units, and variants of unit names, for generating semantically equivalent variants of a natural language term. The mechanism receives an input term for variant analysis. The natural language processing engine executing on the data processing system identifies a semantic type of the input term based on the store of semantic types. The natural language processing engine extracts a quantity and a unit from the input term based on the store of units, conversions among units, and variants of unit names. The natural language processing engine populates type-specific templates at a level of specificity based on the input term based on the identified semantic type of the input term and the extracted quantity and unit to form a set of semantically equivalent variants of the input term. The natural language processing engine performs a natural language processing operation using the input term and the set of semantically equivalent variants of the input term.