Synonymy avoidance

[Jonathan Lighter]

I was told in junior high that there are "only two true synonyms in the English language," and that they are "gorse" and "furze."

The notion seems to be that "true" synonyms share the identical denotation, are of the same syllabic length, belong to the same level of discourse, and seem to share virtually identical associations.

This is, of course, a somewhat tendentious definition of "true synonyms," but "gorse" and "furze" come a lot closer than most. "Whin" might be considered a third synonym, but it's not as rough-sounding as the others.

JL

Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Ed Keer
Subject: Synonymy avoidance
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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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