I said “multiple” in front of my 4 year old and he asked what it meant. I explained, “it can mean many, several, a lot, bunches” etc.
After explaining to him the meaning I realized— why do we have different words that practically mean the same thing?
In: Other
Synonyms don’t mean *exactly* the same thing. They have overlapping meanings, sometimes very significantly overlapping meanings, but not precisely identical meanings.
Notably, the “meaning” here includes not just the definition but also connotations. “Feces” and “shit” are synonyms with the same direct textual definition, but they have different connotations that convey additional meaning.
I’m not sure if the words you mention do classify as synonyms, as they actually carry a nuance – “several” and “a lot” don’t have the same meaning.
(I’m not a native speaker so correct me if I’m wrong)
What you do see here is the word “multiple” which means “more than one” and therefore inherently could be replaced with any word that specifically indicates a size or number above one – like all the words you mentioned.
As for how synonyms come into being – most languages have developed from a mixture of local or regional languages, and influences from languages around it as well. I can imagine this can lead to multiple words being used for the same thing. If one doesn’t gain favor over the other, they both stay.
Also sometimes a brand becomes synonymous with its product – leading to a different type of synonym. I can’t think of an english example rn.
As I said I’m not a native speaker or linguist by any means so this is just my theory
Their meanings are similar, but not the same. They might have different nuances, different use cases, different connotations, etc. You also have to keep in mind how they fit together with other words and how they fit into sentences. You can eat a lot, but you can’t eat multiple. You might go to several different places, but it sounds weird if you go to bunches different places.
Plus I think people sometimes use a word simply because they like the way it sounds. We don’t all have the same idea of what sounds good, though, so synonyms are kept alive by people using the ones they like best.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sum8li/eli5_why_do_synonyms_exist/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sum8li/eli5_why_do_synonyms_exist/)
* Words evolve and change meaning over time. Two words may have had different meanings in the past but slowly evolved to have the same meaning.
* Languages evolve from other languages, sometimes mixing and matching. Two synonymous words could have entered a language from two different languages, or two dialects could evolve to have different words for certain things (like flat vs. apartment, torch vs. flashlight, etc.)
* Most importantly: While two words may be considered “synonyms,” they have slight differences in meaning, or connotation, or significance…to name a few “synonyms” that mean slightly different things. Often the difference is how the word makes you feel, or what it makes you think of.
* Consider “smell” “odor” “aroma” “fragrance” “miasma” and even “stink.” All can be considered synonyms, but all have different connotations.
* In your example, in some cases, “serveral” and “bunches” is consider a lesser amount. “Multple” indicate a concept of having “many”, but “many” typically goes to a large number.
* It helps “give color, precision, and variety to a person’s writing, breaking up the dullness that can come from too many overused words.”, according to Marriam Webster
* Conversely, you have Semantic satiation, in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. One of my favorite piece to demonstrate this is [SCP-SAFE-J](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-safe-j)
Also, there’s one thing that really catch my eye here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ENGLISH/comments/apfksi/why_synonyms/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ENGLISH/comments/apfksi/why_synonyms/)
>It would indeed be “easier” to have less choice, but you might not like it. If you’d like to see an example of what your suggestion might look like, I suggest you read George Orwell’s 1984, which posited a near-future society (the book was written in 1949) which included an attempt to control society’s thoughts by controlling language. The so-called ‘Newspeak’ of the novel is a highly restricted form of English that only allows, as you suggest, a single choice for most common expressions of thought. As an example, there is no longer any better or best. Instead, one could only say ‘plusgood’ or ‘doubleplusgood’. (Superlatives as such ceased to exist, and all descriptives became merely relative to each other, and mostly only to themselves. It was thereby impossible to express extremes of good or bad, but only relative degrees.) Nor was it any longer possible to express different kinds of good or bad. You could feel bad about being late to work, or plusbad about stubbing your toe, or doubleplusbad about your spouse dying, but you could no longer feel irate, frustrated, exasperated, morose, lacrimose, inconsolable, or the countless other flavours of unhappy that our extremely rich vocabulary makes possible.
English is three languages dressed up in a trenchcoat. IE, we’ve stolen liberally from German, French, and Latin. We simply have more words that other languages and a lot of them simply overlap.
English is a mishmash of different languages (for the most part Native Celtic, Saxon German, Norse Danish, Medieval French and various English colonial loanwords) so often Synonyms are just the same word from different language roots.
Synonyms exist because it gives us options to express ourselves in different ways and helps us avoid repeating the same words over and over again. It also adds variety and nuance to our language!
” **practically** the same thing” . That’ s your answer. No two words mean exactly 100% the same thing. Every word has an undertone, stylistic use, a time and a place. Every word can be used in a positive or negative light, to demean or praise, etc. And every word has a sub-sub-sub…. meaning, that one specific use, that another word just couldn’t do. Furthermore, the English language is heavily built on ready expressions, verb phrases, etc. A lot of the time only a specific word would fit in a given phrase. At that point, it isn’t just a word anymore, but that’s a discussion for another time. But remember – just because you as an everyday user don’t know the deeper meaning and difference of a word and consider it ” just a synonym” , doesn’t mean it doesn’t have these subtexts, added psychological, historical or societal connotations (which is what sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and other fields do). Hell, just by the way someone talks or which words they choose to use, you can tell their economic status, their heritage, where they spent their formative years, who their parents are,… All just by the use of certain words.
Sincerely,
a linguist and a teacher
A point that I’m not sure has been raised yet is that a given language will have different varieties and registers that are used by different groups of people and in different contexts. For example, you might have a pair of synonyms of which one is used overwhelmingly by younger people and the other overwhelmingly by older people. There may be many native speakers of the language who are only familiar with one of these words.
It is often claimed that English has a much larger vocabulary than other languages. To the extent that this is true (it’s quite difficult to quantify the total number of words in a language, or even to define what counts as part of the language), it’s because English is a widely spoken language in many different parts of the world and so has many regional varieties, some of which are quite sharply distinct from each other.
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