perfect synonyms

[Jonathan Lighter]

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
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      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.  And get ready for this:  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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