Synonymy avoidance

[Ed Keer]

The discussion of 'dope' reminded me of this issue. I
have a friend who is absolutely convinced that there
is no synonymy in English (I assume he feels this way
about other languages too). He looks for meaning
differences everywhere becuase he wants to be sure he
says exactly what he means.

For example, he won't use 'since', except temporally
because he really means 'because'. He's also driven
himself a little batty looking for the meaning
difference between 'that' and 'which'.

I've heard some linguists believe there is no synonymy
in langusge, but I have a hard time understanding what
that means. Can anybody enlighten me on the issue?




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