Hidden Synonyms

I hate synonyms. Hate them hate them hate them. Why do we have so many words for things? Why not just pick one word and stick with it?

But you know it’s not all bad. I mean Litany offers word for word translations. That allows you to find the synonyms before they are an issue. And I plan to add some sort of indicator for synonyms and near synonyms in a future version of Litany.

But I wanted to talk about something today that’s far worse than a simple synonym. And that is a hidden synonym.

These are two words that you think are different but are actually the same due to pronunciation.

It’s actually pretty funny how in the book Werner describes how these broken words can fool you into thinking one person is actually two. But ultimately I don’t think they’re that problematic because all you really need to do is check the spelling and then the problem is fixed.

Synonyms are another story. Just checking the spelling is not enough. In order to determine if something is a synonym or a near synonym you have to think about its meaning.

And this is a fundamental problem in apps like Anki. They tell you what the phrase means but not the words. This allows synonyms to slip by without you ever catching them. These are what I call hidden synonyms.

These hidden synonyms can be incredibly annoying. If a hidden synonym slips by you you’re instantly doing more work than you need to.

But there’s a much more insidious issue with hidden synonyms. You’ll start to find that you use the wrong word for something. Or you’ll think it’s the wrong word when in reality it’s really just a hidden synonym.

This means you’ll be wasting your time thinking you got the answer wrong when in reality you got the answer right. Or nearly…

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