[Ads-l] perfect synonyms

[Jonathan Lighter]

To return briefly: "whin" isn't so exact a synonym as "gorse" and "furze."
Not only is it four, not five, letters; it shares no letters with "gorse"
and "furze," and it doesn't appear till ca1400.

Both "gorse" and "furze," though, come from Old English.

JL

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 4:35 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: perfect synonyms
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:50 AM -0400 7/10/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Years ago I revived the claim that the two most nearly synonymous words in
> >English are "gorse" and "furze."
>
> This pair also has a distinguished history in the philosophy of
> language, going back (at least) 30 years to a famous paper by Saul
> Kripke in "A Puzzle About Belief" (1979).  His point was that an
> otherwise competent speaker of English could acquire both terms
> through ostensive definitions without realizing that they refer to
> the same thing, so that "X believes that gorse is gorse" and "X
> believes that gorse is furze" could differ in truth value, which
> might to taken to suggest that (on one view of synonymy) they're not
> synonyms after all.
>
> >  Not only do they designate the same
> >referent; they are both monosyllabic and even bear a minor phonetic
> >resemblance.
> >
> >I can now reveal two comparably synonymous English words. They are
> >so mundane, however, that no one will be impressed.
> >
> >The envelope please:
> >
> >"Flapjack" and "slapjack."
> >
>
> The former no doubt arising from the latter on the occasion when John
> Donne spelled "slapjack" with one of those f-ish-looking s's in an
> otherwise obscure erotic poem.
>
> LH
>
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