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
[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.
Latest Answers