What’s the Synonym for “Synonym”?

I do not envy those who endeavor to learn the English language.  There are words which sound the same but have two meanings.   There are words that can be replaced with other words and offer the same meaning; there are seemingly arbitrary rules about placement of modifiers, participles, prepositions.  Not to mention my personal pronunciation favorite, the diphthong.

Most of us have been speaking English (or some form of English) most of our lives, and we still do not have it mastered.  I know the rule about ending a sentence in a preposition, but that remains a trap I continue to fall into (or rather, a trap into which I continue to fall).  Having grown up in East Central Indiana, which is the home of ending a sentence in a preposition, I feel that I will forever violate that particular grammatical rule.

I recently noticed a “Tweet” on the Twitter that those kids are using on the interwebs.  I am unsure of its origin, but it made me laugh.  It posed the question: What’s the Synonym for “Synonym”?  My friends, that particular tweet is right in my wheelhouse when it comes to comedy.  After I finished laughing, I began to think about the question at hand.

According to the thesaurus in Microsoft Word, the synonyms for “synonym” are “substitute” and “replacement”.  Imagine any foreign soul armed with both this knowledge and a lactose intolerance attempting to order a milk-free latte at Starbucks.  The conversation plays out like this in my head:

Foreign Person: “I have the small size latte with milk synonym.”

Barrista: “Small is tall, and we do not have milk with cinnamon.”

Foreign Person: “Small is tall?  That confuses my mind.  Milk synonym, not cinnamon, if it pleases you.”

Annoyed Barrista: “Milk cinnamon?”

Irate Foreign Person: “My stomach make of the gas when milk I have, so synonym my milk with non-milk liquid, if it pleases you!”

All right, that is enough of that…The argument continues in my head, but for the immediate example I believe this exchange will suffice. 

Learning any language is difficult, but it seems that English is likely the most difficult to grasp.  It is almost intentionally confusing at times, and one can only hope to achieve a level of sufficient comprehension in order to convey his, or her, thoughts. 

Just remember, Superman does “good”, and nine times out of ten, you mean to say you are doing “well”.  Unless you are a charity worker or volunteer, then I suppose you can state that you are doing “good”…