the concept of synonyms in literature

[cacian]

I sometimes wonder about the reasons behind synonyms and their actual purpose in appearing in many spellings and yet meaning just the one idea

this is one example I came across:

betrayal and treason.


is there a difference between the two?

[Maximilianus]

Dictionaries I've checked consider that treason is the act of betraying one's government, or one's mother country. Most synonyms, I would say, mean roughly the same but they are often applied to different circumstances, or they follow different levels of seriousness. In other words, betrayal and treason mean the same but the former implies the general concept, whereas the latter is often specifically applied to matters of state, such as national security. For example, if you watch a espionage movie featuring a character who commits the crime of betraying his/her country, you will notice that they never use the word betrayer to refer to this sort of offender. Such a person is always called a traitor. On the other hand, we can speak of a betrayer, double-crosser, squealer, or informant to refer to a character who gives away, let's say, a fellow henchman in a criminal gang. The underlying concept is the same, but some words have been chosen to refer to betraying a henchman (or a wife, friend, coworker, etc.), and some other words have been chosen to refer to betraying one's nation. Some deeds are considered to rest on a more serious level than others, and thus we resort to different words in order to illustrate such levels of seriousness.

That was my humble take on betrayals and treasons. I may be missing something though.

[Gladys]

Words, for the most part, have meaning given by the context in which they are used. For instance, the word "do" probably has a couple of hundred meanings in the OED, according to the wide range of contexts in which "do" has been used in recent centuries.

Looking up a dictionary, at best, provides a range of meanings that are relatively common. None of these may be exactly applicable to a particular case, but ball-park meanings are much better than nothing.

[kiki1982]

Even so, when William the Conqueror came to England from France in 1066, the French had a great influence on the language.

Freedom (from the Germanic Freiheit) and liberty (from the Romance liberté) are only one example of this. Conversely, there are words which you can't replace with their synonyms in expressions. You are 'at liberty' where you are not 'at freedom'. Then you have to use a more Germanic construction. 'I am free to...' or 'I have the freedom to...'.

The idea of using synonyms is probably just because it's so boring to use the very same word again and again. Kafka does that often in his work, but it is pretty special and practically unique to him alone. Normal authors try to avoid this for obvious stylistic reasons.

Are we not all taught in school, 'Don't over-use the same word, because it's not nice to read.'

[Charles Darnay]

Are we not all taught in school, 'Don't over-use the same word, because it's not nice to read.'

I think this is it. Even in prose - particularly in verse - the sounds of words are key. Sometimes two words may convey the exact same meaning (as demonstrated by context) but one has a sound that works better in the phrase it is used in.

And then of course there are the always subtle differences in connotation (if not denotation) that exists in the world of synonyms.