Why are synonyms a thing?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.