Synonymy avoidance

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:59 PM -0800 3/8/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>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.
>

Don't we also want to force them to co-occur in the same idiolect?
Since I don't use either "gorse" or "furze" in mine, let me bring up
another pair which I've heard claimed (probably falsely) are complete
synonyms, distinguished by geography:  "hella" (on the West Coast)
and "wicked" (in the Northeast).  These are, by stipulation,
synonyms, but if they're not used by the same speakers, they don't
challenge the relevant non-synonymy generalization anymore than do
"snow" and "neige".  Of course it may be claimed that "hella" and
"wicked" fail the "identical associations" anyway.  But then "furze"
sounds somehow friendlier to me than "gorse".  Does that count?

larry