Your Thesaurus Will Not Protect You

Language is not autonomous.

When I read academic work, which is a fairly common occurrence for a coach and teacher, I can quickly identify when some other teacher, somewhere along the line, told my client or student the key to varying tone is synonyms. I know because it happened to me. “Keep your Thesaurus on your desk,” I was told in the days when jumping on a search engine was either impossible or unintuitive.

I’d rather suggest: Keep your thesaurus off your desk.

Why? Well, for one, it’s your language, not that of the digital, automated abyss or the reference section of your home library.

Secondly, synonyms are not, in fact, synonyms (according to Oxford Languages, “a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase”).

Merriam-Webster provides me with roughly 60 synonyms for the past tense verb said. Its format allows me to quickly identify the closest synonyms: told, talked, uttered, spoke, discussed, stated.

Ok, fair enough.

The bartended said, “the beer is $5.” The bartender talked, “the beer is $5.” The bartender uttered, “the beer is $5.” The bartender spoke, “the beer is $5.” The bartender discussed, “the beer is $5.” The bartender stated, “the beer is $5.”

Some of those mean the same thing. Some are nonsensical, but could be made more coherent with minor changes: The bartender discussed why the beer cost $5. The bartender might, in fact, have talked about the fact that the beer was $5. The bartender spoke about the price of the beer, which was $5.

Those are not the same thing. They convey similar information, but not in the same way.

Continuing with Merriam-Webster’s offerings, said can mean: shared, shouted, verbalized, enunciated, brought out, blurted, declared, commented, and so on.

Use those verbs in the same sentence and see what you come up with. For my money, the bartender who shouted the price of beer is a different bartender than the one who enunciated it, or blurted it, or declared it. All of these convey the price of beer, but the bartender is not the same person in all of them. The bartender has not had the same kind of day in all of them. The bartender’s goal is not the same in all of them.

In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Audre Lorde showed us (or declared to us, or illuminated for us, or demanded of us, or blabbered at us), “your silence will not protect you.”

I have certainly found that statement to be true. I find it true whether it is said, blabbered, or demanded, but my choice of which past tense verb to use when describing it shows my reception of Lorde’s claim.

Your thesaurus will also not protect you.

Reading through hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of academic papers and dissertations, striving to help writers find a clear voice, those verbs have come to take on quite a bit of meaning.

A hypothetical doctoral candidate might want to articulate what their school psychologist research participants said about individual education plans. If Participant 3 exclaimed, “IEPs must incorporate parental feedback,” I will read that differently than if Participant 3 uttered, “IEPs must incorporate parental feedback,” or if Participant 3 formalized, “IEPs must incorporate parental feedback.”

These are not the same statements, even though Merriam-Webster’s list would tell me they are.  The items on Merriam-Webster’s list are not intended to be value-free and equivalent. The words you use matter, even when there are numerous options that can be categorized, roughly, as “the same.” Language is more complicated than that. Life is, too.

I could say the same of domiciles, homes, houses, and automobiles, cars, vehicles, and foliage, greenery, plants.

Writing is not an easily categorizable or automated process. If we operate in good faith, we know we don’t have many rights and wrongs in writing, just falsehoods and truths and options and estimations. Even in science. Words are not numbers, which are also important but, unless we are nothing more than processing machines, need to be conveyed in language.

This is not a criticism of dictionaries and thesauri. I use them, too. However, language is nuanced, and rules are squishy. Before outsourcing your words—the way you convey your thoughts to the world—to a bot or a dusty old reference book, make your own choices. The ideas are yours and so is your language.

An editor will not protect you, either. But they might listen to you, and they are trained to help you make your voice heard, not just your information.

The driving impulse behind Calamus Writing and Editing is that writing is human, complex, and beautiful. It is that we need more humanity in the conveying of ideas, not less. We need more complex thinking about things that may be similar, but not the same. Writing is human connection, not adherence to categories and rules.