Quote:
Originally Posted by Duncan Gillies MacLaurin
If two words are identical in meaning, one will fall out of use.
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Huh? Don't many words in the language have long lists of synonyms? Among the synonyms for a particular word, some will have the same or nearly the same meaning, while others will carry significant or subtle differences, either denotatively or connotatively. And it would be a specious argument to say that no two synonymous words are
really identical in meaning, for then logic would seem to dictate that no two words exist or could ever exist that mean the same thing, which makes the above quoted statement rather absurd.
Richard