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Is there a word for two words that have similar but
different meanings, but are often used as though synonymous and interchangeable?
Examples include:
- Photomicrograph and microphotograph
- Enlarge and magnify
- QC and QA
- Fixative and preservative
- Depth-of-field and depth-of-focus
I'm writing Cytopreparation Principles and Practice, a book
that describes how to prepare cells for microscopic examination (eg, Pap
tests).
Absent an appropriate word, I'll probably refer to such word
pairs as “odd couples.â€
Can anyone help?
Not because I think it's a better suggestion, but just to help expand your thinking a bit, there are words in foreign languages that LOOK like English cognates but are not; in French they teach us to call these faux amis, "false friends". I don't think you should switch to that term in your book, but maybe if you're going to coin a term for them, maybe this'll help you think of other possibilities.
I once got into a heated argument with someone over whether "channel" and "station" were true synonyms or not (I had written a haiku that depended on them meaning the same thing).
I've heard it said that all synonyms are only approximate, that there are always implications or shades of meaning that differ. Closest I've ever found to a truly identical pair is "epinephrine" and "adrenalin" (which, interestingly, both come down to "stuff from above the kidney", one in Greek and the other in Latin).
Thesauri are full of synonyms that range from “identical meaning†all the way to “barely hinted relationship,†so it's absolutely hard to find a word that can stake out a territory that is not already covered by such wide range.
Such a word would be a synonym of the word 'synonym.' For fun I google for it- no luck!
For those who care about such things, I just discovered a good explanation of the whole Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus issue. I had planned to pick a nit over telemath's offering, which would have gone something like this: The reason they changed the name from Brontosaurus to Apatosaurus is that they decided the earlier name was not just inappropriate but actually inaccurate in some way (I forget exactly how). Therefore one could argue that the names aren't synonymous after all; they were used to refer to the same species, but their meaning is different. It's a technicality, but...
Unfortunately for my nitpick, I tried to find out just why they changed the name, and discovered I was wrong; it has nothing to do with the meaning of the names. According to miketailor.org, a paleontologist named Marsh named one set of fossils Apatosaurus and a later and better set Brontosaurus, and it wasn't until a few decades later that paleontologists concluded they are actually the same species. In that case the older name applies, and "Brontosaurus" bites the dust....except that "thunder lizard" still reigns in the imaginations of dinosaur lovers everywhere.
I mention this now because if you like such things, this miketailor.org site promises to be a good resource.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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