Young Writers Society

What’s with language and its deep words? Sesquipedalian, canoodle, numinous, flummox? What do those words even mean?! What’s with those words? They have synonyms which simplifies them. So why not be simple and instead, use the simpler synonyms? Or why not just give a two plus word, that equals it, for an alternative? Why does language demands words that utterly means the same? Why must there be alternatives for words that just confuse people? Why do some people choose the alternatives that don’t help at all?
I really find something wrong about synonyms. Did they invent the synonyms to just establish the thesaurus? So they can gain money, so they can be filthy rich, so they can act rich and belittle poorer people? Well obviously, most people would disagree. But what if this was real reason after all? Nah, too improbable.
Like everything here in Earth, synonyms too have pros and cons. Possibly one of the best advantage of knowing synonyms is that if we don’t know that specific word, we at least know a word equivalent to it. Another would be that it helps a lot to poetry if you want to be archaic and be a rhyming maniac (it rhymes!). In the other side, the negative part of knowing synonyms is well... you have read it in first paragraph, it’s annoying, it confuses people, especially if it’s such a complex word. Everytime you see a very complex word in some short story, you’ll be picking up the dictionary to only discover that it’s equal to a word as simple as pretty. Annoying, right?
Synonyms help like an alternative. If we don’t have one specific object, we can rely on the alternative. Same thing to medicine and herbal alternatives, right? But that’s now. We think of the advantage now when it was already established. But what about then? Have the creators of synonyms though that it would be better if there would be alternatives? Have they said, “I will coin the word huge for it can help people if they don’t know the word big.” Was that their objective?
But take a look at simple synonyms: huge and big, beautiful and pretty, small and tiny. Those words are plain simple English. Probably a first grader would already know them all. So those words are not just equal linguistically, but also equal to its complexity, simplicity, and at the time we learned it. So why do people made synonyms that are completely, totally, and absolutely equal in many ways. It’s like having a white PSP as an alternative for a black PSP. Only reason you’ll be choosing the other as an alternative because you favour its colour rather the other one. Same to big and huge, right? You pick the other because you prefer it more. Buy if this was objectives of the creators of synonyms, why did they create them? Was it just for variety then?
But what if there’s another reason? What if the creators of synonyms coined them if they never knew that a word equivalent to their word was already established? What if they coined them just for their purpose? What if they made huge because they never knew that big existed?
Synonyms and its origin are just so mysterious. Curiosity fills me when I think of it. I’m curious, about synonyms and how it came to this world. If there was a chance for someone to answer these questions, my ears would be fully prepared for those answers. But for now, while no one has the knowledge over them, I’m just curious, are you?

Very true. I totally agree with you. But then, I've always felt that the use of some attractive words, while speaking or writing, is always impressive. They add a kind of charm to your writing or vocabulary. So, maybe synonyms were made just to add a bit of charm to the language.