How do languages end up with so many words for the same thing?

274 views

Why did we not stop at “big” and instead we now have “huge”, “massive”, “giagantic”, “large”, “enormous” etc?

In: 0

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because they aren’t the same thing. Depending on the context, those words expressing size can mean different relative sizes depending on the word. They are intensifiers of a basic meaning.

For a similar reason, we have meaningless intensifiers like “very” and “damn”, which according to Mark Twain are interchangeable and your writing is improved if either one are removed. So “very big” is bigger than merely “big”, and “damn huge” is bigger still.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.