I love synonyms. All day we writers pluck synonyms from our friend the “synonym finder,” otherwise known as a thesaurus. Oh, and what’s funny is that thesaurus is a word for which there is no synonym, unless you use “wordfinder,” but that doesn’t quite do it for me.
The English language is blessed with probably having (there’s debate—always debate!) more words than any other language. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary. Oh, and there may be 20 per cent of the words in the dictionary that are no longer in current use. If distinct senses (more than one meaning for the same word) were counted, the total number of words in the English language could be as many as three quarters of a million, while the Global Language Monitor declared 1,025,109.8 words in the English language on January 1, 2014. Here are some thoughts:
- I don’t know how you get .8 words.
- I believe it’s a guess because scholars argue about words all the time.
- That was 2 years ago. A lot can happen in 2 years and words crop up all the time these days, so
- There are probably a lot more words now.
- I think we should find a synonym for thesaurus. Don’t you?
That said, there should be a synonym for almost any word you pick. Isn’t that grand? From there, we could say that using the same word over and over in a piece is, um, well, boring. (I might say lazy, but I won’t).
On the other hand, finding some high-falootin’ word no one’s ever heard of doesn’t help your writing either. If no one understands what you’re writing, you might just as well write in a closet. If your readers have to say “HUH?” they’ll stop reading your stuff.
Use synonyms to your advantage and you’ll also increase your vocabulary… which is cool, and you will help your readers learn new words too!
P.S. I like a lot of the “-nym” words.
- I like the sound of the word homonym. It means “sounds alike.” Examples: They’re. There. Their.
- I like the word antonym, too. It’s the opposite of the meaning. Examples: Good vs. Evil. Up vs. Down.