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This is a thought that has been haunting me for some time. And, as we are all here prone to punditry, I want to hear the general thoughts on this one.
My position is that all words carry some form of sub-text or connotation that will prevent any two words from being absolute synonyms. Even words like 'aluminum' and 'aluminium' carry subtext of the speaker's frame of reference. What is the verdict from the cloud?
I second EmmettRedd's verdict. It's an interesting question, but if there were truly "absolute" synonyms, why would there be additional words to choose from? If there wasn't some "meta-data" associated with the other word, we wouldn't need it. Even in the exact world of mathematics you find subtle distinctions. For example, at first read, "sum" and "total" would appear to mean the same, and within mathematics they probably are absolute synonyms. But since each word can be used outside the context of math, even as verbs instead of nouns, they could never be considered truly absolute synonyms. I doubt absolute synonyms exist. I'd be interested to hear an example that you couldn't shoot a hole in.
I agree - Absolute synonyms are only absolute within a limited context. I first thought of "dead" and "deceased". They are absolutely the same in the context of biological life. But when someone says, "My battery is dead," symmetry is broken.
Even within math, I might distinguish between "sum" and "total." "Sum" feels like a single step, while "total" has a feeling of finality. This distinction may exist in my brain only. Individual results may vary.
Wow, that's pretty damn close to absolute (polyglottic vs. multilingual). The only distinction I can see would be that "multilingual" is sort of an Anglicized version of "polyglottic" (which derives directly from Greek/Latin roots). In everyday conversation, you'd use "multilingual" and most people would know what you meant. If you used "polyglottic" you'd probably get a vacant stare unless you were talking to a linguist.
So does that make them truly "absolute" or does the meta-data of "to whom they are being spoken" confer a different meaning? It's similar to the distinction between "murder" and "homicide" I think. Many other such examples exist, especially in fields like law, medicine, and science. If I hear someone say "homicide" rather than "murder" it might give me some meta-data about the speaker or the intended audience. In terms of meaning, they are essentially identical. Still, as telemath notes, the symmetry can be broken when it's used like "We're gonna murder the home team."
And as EmmettRedd points out, "absolute" is a very high standard. Lacking a rigorous definition of "absolute synonym" it's hard to say when or if the meta-data adds a nuance to the actual meaning. But Glenn's example comes about as close as it can.
From Wiki: Some lexicographers claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) because etymology, orthography, phonic qualities, ambiguous meanings, usage, etc. make them unique. Different words that are similar in meaning usually differ for a reason: feline is more formal than cat; long and extended are only synonyms in one usage and not in others (for example, a long arm is not the same as an extended arm).
You might find a few exact synonyms among technical terms; adrenalin and epinephrine for instance (where both not only name the same substance, but in Latin and Greek respectively refer to the source as something "atop the kidney"). Likewise acetaminophen and paracetamol.
Ron Draney said:
You might find a few exact synonyms among technical terms; adrenalin and epinephrine for instance (where both not only name the same substance, but in Latin and Greek respectively refer to the source as something "atop the kidney"). Likewise acetaminophen and paracetamol.
I agree. I think that nuances tend to accrue to words the more they are in common use. The more technical and uncommon the words, the more likely they are to have single, specific meanings. If you can find two such words with the same meaning you've met the goal.
The argument reproduced by Wiki (above) is unhelpful and obvious, and goes way too far by ascribing meaning to orthography and phonic qualities. It amounts to saying that different words must be different because they are different words.
You could make the same Humpty-Dumpty argument about each utterance of a single word, saying that when I say "home" it is in a different context from when you say "home" and therefore has a different nuance of meaning. In fact, when I say "home" once, the next time I say "home" in the exact same sentence, it has accrued the context of the first utterance, which nuance the first utterance didn't have.
These unnamed lexicographers, if they exist, suck the very life out of language, rather than adding richness to it: their sophistry is abortive, insipid, and tedious.
Glenn said:
You could make the same Humpty-Dumpty argument about each utterance of a single word, saying that when I say "home" it is in a different context from when you say "home" and therefore has a different nuance of meaning. In fact, when I say "home" once, the next time I say "home" in the exact same sentence, it has accrued the context of the first utterance, which nuance the first utterance didn't have.
An example I like to use at times like this:
The sentence I am now writing is the sentence you are now reading.
As implied by the word "is" in the middle, both occurrences of "sentence" refer to the same thing. The same cannot be said for the two occurrences of "now".
This is a really great example. It helps to distinguish between the meaning of a word and its reference. In this case now refers to two different times, but the meaning remains the same. This is just as true of solid objects: book, house, man, eye, shoe.
Perhaps some of us remember when one could get a mortgage and some bureaucrat instructed us to sign "here, here, here, here, and here."
At first glance I agree with the original premiss. But it's fun to try for counter-examples. How do you feel about "polysyllabic" and "multisyllabic"?
What about specialized referents? Off-hand, I'd say "car" and "automobile" are synonymous. You might cite "railroad car", but then "car" is referring to a different object; might I claim that's outside the scope of the question? Answer: No, probably not. But I'll keep squirming around, looking for an out.
"Car" and "automobile"? You're right that the word "car" can have other meanings that are not synonymous. That's what kept me from mentioning "mercury" and "quicksilver" (since "mercury" is also a planet and a Roman god, and "quicksilver" can be used attributively as in "I was fascinated by his quicksilver piano-playing"). I'm less certain about "sulfur" and "brimstone".
If the existence of the same word with a completely different meaning isn't a bar to declaring it a synonym, I can offer the mathematical terms "root" and "solution". Both words have plenty of other meanings that can't be substituted for each other, but within the narrow confines of equations they mean exactly the same thing.
Ok, Ron, I bow to necessity. I was just reaching.
If "flammable" and "inflammable" work, maybe so do "ravel" and "unravel".
But mostly I think I have to agree with the original post. Even as a child I remember musing over the many nouns for containers that we seem to have collected over the centuries: cup, jar, mug, can, glass, stein, jug, bottle, tin and so on (and that's just for the ones we drink from!). None of them are quite the same, even though all of them are to some extent interchangeable with others. The less concrete ones—like pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, cute, handsome, striking, attractive, foxy and more that will occur to you—are even further from synonymity.
...Although surprisingly enough I've found that most people agree to some degree on the meanings of each. I can't define even to myself how "beautiful", "pretty" and "cute" differ, yet not only have I firm ideas of which women are which, but my friends seem mostly to agree. Interesting.
Dick said:
How about flammable and inflammable?
I have to imagine that Dick is being facetious when he suggested these, not because he's wrong, mind you, but because these are perhaps the most terrible examples of words that mean exactly the same thing and are thus understood. I can't find the article online, nor do I remember in which publication I read it, but I remember something about a city (or a state, or small town -- again, I can't remember) going to the expense of changing every sign that said "inflammable" because people think it means "not flammable," which could be a catastrophic misunderstanding ("Hey, Bobby, we can light these fireworks next to this here gas main -- it says "inflammable"). And one can only fault the people who might misunderstand to a point; they at least generally understand their prefixes.
Not surprising, this confusion, when you have words like "invulnerable" or "intractable" or "inconceivable" (and more). The meaning of the prefix "in" is sometimes replaced by "im" or "un" or "non" (and probably more). One of the many reasons English can be so difficult to learn. Not sure how that meaning is conveyed in other languages, but I'd guess it would be more consistent. Well ... maybe.
One side comment: The "im-" prefix is just the "in-" prefix with the last letter changed to match the first sound of whatever word it's attached to. This one is Latin, but they did the same thing in Greek too: The "syn-" prefix means "with", but you see it in words like "synthesis", "symmetry", "syllable" and so on.
I'm not saying I'd want to learn English as a second language, mind you.
...Although I have heard it said that while English is a very difficult language to learn to speak and write well, it is much easier than many languages to learn to speak and write poorly but understandably. And in a way I can see it. Forget about spelling for a moment, and think about a man trying to get passers-by to understand that his wife is sick and he wants to know where a hospital is. He can stammer out something like "sick my woman are; doctor want I where please?" and the meaning is bound to be pretty clear. Try that in French and see the funny looks you get...because the proper suffixes in a Romance language, or in any highly inflected language, are so bound up in its speakers' minds with their meanings that if you make even a minor mistake you often seem to be saying something unintelligible. Well, it is unintelligible, by definition.
So maybe it's not a bad thing for the world that English happens to be its lingua franca, just now.
Cracked me up Tromboniator! My wife grew up in the Midwest, so maybe this is a regional thing, but it's nevertheless outright incorrect. She often uses the term "unthaw" to refer to what she intends to do with a frozen food. And she's a nutritionist by training! Bugs the hell outa me.
Other than that, I really do like her.
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