perfect synonyms

[Wilson Gray]

To paraphrase Pryor, "Don't know no _slapjack_." Y'all be done raised
my vocabulary to a whole 'nother level.

Of course, I've surely used "whin" millions of times. Oh, wait. You're
saying that there exists another word, _whin_, that *doesn't*
represent the  non-standard pronunciation of _when_ in eye-dialect.

-Wilson


On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: perfect synonyms
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Well, can my heat and call me Sterno.
>
> But we didn't discuss flapjack/ slapjack, aardvark/ earth-pig, *or* Henry
> Attwell.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Benjamin Zimmer <
> bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: perfect synonyms
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter  wrote:
>> >
>> > Henry Attwell, in _Notes & Queries_ (7th Ser.) XI, May 23, 1891, p. 406,
>> may
>> > have been the genius who first identified "gorse" and "furze" as roughly
>> 98
>> > 44/100 % identical synonyms. Â And get ready for this: Â he also adduced
>> > "whin," which, while phonetically not so close, is semantically
>> identical,
>> > making a "triplet of synonyms" (or "hat trick," for mavens of metaphor).
>>
>> We talked about gorse, furze, and whin back in Mar. '05...
>>
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0503B&L=ADS-L&P=R1385
>>
>>
>> --Ben Zimmer
>>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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