Post by account_disabled on Dec 30, 2023 5:16:47 GMT
Why create two words that have the same meaning? Synonyms are words that express similar concepts, not identical meanings. Think of the English words house and home . Are they synonymous? Can we really use them interchangeably? In my article on words that express words I said something wrong, namely that "murder" and "murder" are synonymous. In reality, we just need to check a dictionary (in this case Treccani online) and we discover that they are not synonyms. To the two I added a third which could be synonymous: Murder : crime of someone who takes one or more human lives. Murder : voluntary killing of a human being, carried out for base reasons and in a brutal or treacherous manner. Killing : The action of killing, the fact of being killed.
Notice the differences? “Murder” is a legal term to indicate a type of crime, “murder” means voluntarily causing the death of a person, while “killing” expresses the action, but not necessarily referring to a human being. Treccani himself tells us that synonym means: "Which has a fundamentally identical meaning, which means the same thing". Here's the problem: we use synonyms Special Data convinced that we are using words that mean the same thing. But I repeat what I said at the beginning: why create two or more words that have the same meaning? Synonyms and etymology If there is a science that has always fascinated me, it is etymology. The history of words. I often consult an etymological dictionary, the online version of Ottorino Pianigiani's Etymological Vocabulary of the Italian Language. Etymology investigates the past of the word, reconstructs its existence from its ancestors up to the latest mutations.
Often, thanks to etymology, we can understand if there is synonymy between two words. Let's take an example: Soldo : from the Latin soldus , contraction for solidus nummus , because it was a whole and not fractional piece, that is, a whole coin and not one of its parts. The word was then used to generally indicate currency, money. Money : from the Latin denarius nummus , in turn from deni , that is, ten in number, because among the Romans it was a coin worth 10 asses. Now used to mean money. Quattrino : from four, because it was an ancient Tuscan coin worth 4 denarii; in the Kingdom of Naples it was the fourth part of a coin called wheat (and hence, perhaps, the expression "I have a lot of money"). Especially in the plural it indicates money in general. Synonyms or not? In this case yes, but they are only in the modern era, because the language has taken possession of those words. But we cannot use them without discretion in a historical context, because it would be a gross mistake.
Notice the differences? “Murder” is a legal term to indicate a type of crime, “murder” means voluntarily causing the death of a person, while “killing” expresses the action, but not necessarily referring to a human being. Treccani himself tells us that synonym means: "Which has a fundamentally identical meaning, which means the same thing". Here's the problem: we use synonyms Special Data convinced that we are using words that mean the same thing. But I repeat what I said at the beginning: why create two or more words that have the same meaning? Synonyms and etymology If there is a science that has always fascinated me, it is etymology. The history of words. I often consult an etymological dictionary, the online version of Ottorino Pianigiani's Etymological Vocabulary of the Italian Language. Etymology investigates the past of the word, reconstructs its existence from its ancestors up to the latest mutations.
Often, thanks to etymology, we can understand if there is synonymy between two words. Let's take an example: Soldo : from the Latin soldus , contraction for solidus nummus , because it was a whole and not fractional piece, that is, a whole coin and not one of its parts. The word was then used to generally indicate currency, money. Money : from the Latin denarius nummus , in turn from deni , that is, ten in number, because among the Romans it was a coin worth 10 asses. Now used to mean money. Quattrino : from four, because it was an ancient Tuscan coin worth 4 denarii; in the Kingdom of Naples it was the fourth part of a coin called wheat (and hence, perhaps, the expression "I have a lot of money"). Especially in the plural it indicates money in general. Synonyms or not? In this case yes, but they are only in the modern era, because the language has taken possession of those words. But we cannot use them without discretion in a historical context, because it would be a gross mistake.