I need a promise from the world: please stop asking me what words mean.

On the surface of it, I’m a sensible person to ask this sort of thing. I’ve been in the English language field for over ten years, six of those as a teacher, working with foreign students to understand English. I know about appropriate uses of realia, mime, drawings; when translation’s appropriate and when it falls short. I can discuss the pros and cons of monolingual vs bilingual dictionaries, and proselytise about the benefits of text-based lessons over a PPP structure. But please don’t ask me what a word means any longer.

The problem partly is that the subtlety of the explanation I’d give depends on your English proficiency. If you’re just starting to learn English, I’d keep things simple. If you’ve been studying a while, I’d give you some of the nuance. Unfortunately, though, my explanations seem to work on an exponential curve of complexity: if your first language is English I end up gibbering and gesticulating at you while terms like ‘semantic prosody’ and ‘perlocutionary intent’ fall out of my face.

Because you think that ‘what does this word mean?’ is a straightforward question. It’s not.

Denotation vs connotation

Let’s start easy. Denotation is the explicit primary definition of a word. The connotation is the figurative meaning. So a word like ‘home’ denotes ‘the place where you live’ and connotes ‘a place of sanctuary’. ‘Housemate’ denotes ‘the person you live with’ and connotes ‘the person who gets in the way and never does the washing up’. But you knew this already, ‘cause you’re smart.

Semantics vs pragmatics

Similar to denotation and connotation, semantics is about literal meaning and pragmatics about the speaker’s intent. For example, ‘could you pass me the salt’ might mean ‘are you physically able to pass me the salt’ (literal meaning), usually means ‘please pass me the salt’, and might mean ‘you’ve been talking to your friends instead of me for hours and I need something to throw at your head’ ¹.

Context and chunking

Words mean different things in different contexts. Enter a lovely exemplar: the jaw-achingly annoying de-lexicalised verb ‘get’. You get me? Will you get me a coffee? Do I get off at this stop? What did you get for your birthday? What time will you get here? Who did you get to meet at the party? And that’s before I look up the word in Urban Dictionary (almost certainly not recommended).

Register and domain

Here’s another one: words connote different things if they clash with the level of formality that’s appropriate in situation, or with the language that you would normally use in a particular situation, as anyone knows who’s received the phrase ‘further to my last email’ from someone they thought was a friend.

Demographic

This is my native language, damn it. ² But even if you ignore new slang and its role as an in-group signifier, if a teenager says ‘groovy’… well, I don’t know what they’re trying to communicate. But it’s not the denotational meaning of the word.

Idiolect

You know how you can read an email from a friend and know who it’s from without looking at the address or sign-off? That’s because it’s written in their idiolect. But that means, if someone copies your idiolect – like, starting to use a word or phrase that you use a lot – part of the meaning they’re conveying is ‘you rock. I want to sound like you. Which might just makes me 10% more creepy than I was before I did that’ ³.

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And on and on and on, down an endless spiral of meaning and pedantry that ends in the aforementioned gibbering and gesticulating. Be grateful you’re not in the same room as me right now.

And so back to the title of this post, which was inspired by a colleague of mine this week, who looked at a list of key words I had given him, and emailed me to ask for synonyms for each one. And I had to lay my head down on my nice gel wrist rest and whimper until he and his crazy request went away. Because – while perhaps it’s a bit extreme to say that there’s no such thing as a synonym – there are actually very few synonyms out there.

For example, that nice straightforward word we had earlier, ‘home’. Some possible synonyms are dwelling, residence, abode, digs. I don’t think any of those terms could actually be substituted for another without generating much mirth. For example:

• ‘Welcome to my digs’ = I am a time traveller from the 60s / someone’s parent trying too hard to be cool
• ‘Welcome to my residence’ = I am either a lawyer who gets my kicks from reading housing contracts, or the President of the United States
• ‘Welcome to my dwelling’ = I am an anthropologist specialising in primitive humankind. Be careful where you sit: there may be mud
• ‘Welcome to my abode’ = I am Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice. Run as fast as you can before I show you the closet with shelves.