Playing the Synonym Game 

by Ken Bresler

Versions of this article appeared in The Vocabula Review, April 2001 and American Educator, Winter 2001

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

That was Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940. It’s called his Speech on Dunkirk, and in it, Churchill said, “We shall fight” seven times.

Notice all the synonyms that he could have used, but didn’t:

battle [as a verb]
give battle
do battle
go to battle
war [as a verb]
war against
go to war
wage war
make war
take the field
take up arms
attack
assault
assail
beset
repel
repulse
resist
withstand
stand ground

Only one phrase comes close to a synonym for “fight”: “defend.” Churchill wasn’t scared of repetition, but many people are.

Gourd

The Boston Globe published an article on October 1, 2000 about a pumpkin-growing contest. The writer and editors should have faced facts: if you’re going to write about a pumpkin-growing contest, you’re going to use the word “pumpkin” a lot. “Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.” Get used to it.

But no. The very first paragraph – before any reader could possibly be bored with the word “pumpkin” – refers to “the huge, orange produce item.” Do you think that anyone goes home a few days before Halloween and calls out, “Honey! Kids! Time to carve the orange produce item”?

A photograph accompanying the article pictured 11 pumpkins. The caption referred to a “gourd.” If you check the dictionary, the caption was technically correct: a pumpkin is a gourd. But who thinks of a pumpkin weighing 1,122 pounds (the one in the photo) as a gourd?

The Synonym Game

The process that leads to “pumpkin” being called an “orange produce item” and a “gourd” has a few names. “Synonymomania” is what Theodore M. Bernstein called it. “Elegant variation” is what H. W. Fowler called it. (Bernstein was an editor at The New York Times. Fowler was a witty commentator on and teacher of English.)

In an interview, the writer Alan Furst said, “I knew enough…to avoid the malady I call ‘thesaurusitis,’ the symptoms of which are ghastly: ‘“Oh, no!,”’ he ejaculated,’ and like that.”

Editors sometimes call it “the Slender Yellow Fruit Syndrome,” wrote Patricia T. O’Connor in her book Woe is I. “It is best explained by example: Freddie was offered an apple and a banana, and he chose the slender yellow fruit.”

I call it “playing the synonym game.”

A Rule of Thumb

Even the best writers and editors play the synonym game. In 1998, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission required mutual funds to write their prospectuses in plain English. To help implement the regulations, the SEC issued A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents. It’s an excellent writing manual, yet its compilers—experienced and insightful people—played the synonym game.

The phrase “principles” appears on pages 15, 18, and 67.
The word “guidelines” appears on pages 21, 32, 49, and 53.
The words “advice” and “guidelines” appear in the same sentence on page 21, implying that they are synonyms.
The phrase “suggestions” appears on page 63 twice.
The word “elements” appears on page 38.
The phrase “a rule of thumb” appears on page 39.
The phrase “a general rule” appears on page 41.
The phrase “a safe rule” appears on page 47.

Does the word “principles” mean the same as “guidelines”? Is “advice” the same as “suggestions”? Do “a rule of thumb,” “a general rule,” and “a safe rule” mean the same thing? Are “suggestions” less important and authoritative than “principles,” or are all these words and phrases synonyms for each other?

I wrote to the SEC, trying to find out, but the SEC didn’t respond. A reader of the SEC’s Handbook – someone trying to comply with the SEC’s plain English regulation – is left wondering, “Is the choice of words significant?” A reader who is familiar with constitutional and Biblical interpretation knows that every word in the U.S. Constitution and Bible is significant, and no word is superfluous. But a reader of the SEC’s Handbook is left wondering, “Is a synonym sometimes just a synonym?”

Reasons Not to Play

Playing the synonym game has at least 6 problems.

1. It can be pretentious. Call a spade a spade, not “a digging tool” or “an earth-moving implement.”

2 (closely related to problem 1). It can be ridiculous, as in “slender yellow fruit.”

3. It can be inexact. Mark Twain, the cogent commentator on language and so many other things, said that “when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness….”

Does “orange produce item” describe only pumpkins? No, it also describes carrots, nectarines, and dozens of other fruits and vegetables.

4. It makes the writer do more work. Checking a thesaurus, even an electronic one, takes time. Devising synonyms without a thesaurus takes time.

One consulting firm wrote that it had “analyzed an S&L’s operating strategy and determined the riskiness of the institution’s loan and investment portfolios as part of an investigation of the causes of a large California savings and loan company’s failure.” In one sentence, “an S&L,” “the institution,” and “a savings and loan company” all refer to the same thing. It took the writer time and effort to devise those synonyms.

The writer could have written, “As part of an investigation into why a California savings and loan company failed, we analyzed its operating strategy and determined how risky its loan and investment portfolios were.”

5. It makes the reader do more work. But your job when you write is to do the readers’ job for them. One consultant wrote, and I paraphrase, “We examined the market for a product. Our study identified competitors, evaluated the advantages of the product, and estimated demand. We also assessed the likelihood of new competitors entering the market.”

“Examined,” “identified,” “evaluated,” “estimated,” and “assessed.” Are these separate processes or the same? Some of them are probably separate; some of them are probably the same. But why did the writer make us have to stop and wonder? Why did the writer make us have to answer? And the answer we have is only an uncertain “probably.”

6. It’s unnecessary to use synonyms.

Being pretentious vs. being boring

So why do people play the synonym game? People whom I teach and coach tell me, “That’s how I learned to write in school” and “I don’t want to be boring.”

In The Writing of Economics, D. McCloskey wrote that “many of the rules we learned in Miss Jones’ class in the eighth grade are wrong.”

“‘Never repeat the same word or phrase within three lines,’ said Miss Jones, and because the rule fitted splendidly with our budding verbosity at age 13 we adopted it as the habit of a lifetime.”

What’s McCloskey’s response to “That’s how I learned to write in school”? “The eighth grade,” McCloskey says, “is over.”

What’s my response to “I don’t want to be boring”? I have two responses.

One, if you have to choose between being pretentious, ridiculous, and inexact (by using synonyms), and boring (by avoiding synonyms), choose boring.

Two, using the same word is not boring. Reread Churchill’s Speech on Dunkirk. Using the same word can have rhythm and power.

Snow

If you live where it snows and you need a reminder not to play the synonym game, it will come during winter. It’s part of my weather prediction. In winter you will read an article about snow, or hear a major weather forecast about snow.

The Inuit have dozens of words for “snow,” it is said. But we’re not Inuit. We have one word. The article’s writer or the broadcaster will not be comfortable repeating, “Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow.” At some point the writer or broadcaster will call it “white stuff.”

“White stuff” is your cue to laugh and to remember not to play the synonym game.