Chrysti The Wordsmith: Synonyms - 3

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith from Montana State University. Recently on this program we've been looking at synonyms pairs of words with the same meaning such as home and house and bashful and shy. These kinds of terms are freely interchanged by English speakers. Yet if we look closely we can find subtle differences between them. The histories behind the synonyms just mentioned bashful and shy for example illustrate their fine distinctions. Bashful comes from the verb abash meaning to embarrass or put to shame by exciting a sense of guilt. So one who is full of bashed or bashed fall is shame faced easily embarrassed and excessively modest. Our word shy comes ultimately from an old Germanic term meaning to scare the original application of the word Shiela specifically to an excitable horse that veered or fled in panic. The sense of shy as timid and fearful as applied to humans dates from the 17th century so etymologically at least shy means fearful

while a bashful person is easily shamed. Though English is a language rich with synonyms it is difficult to find pairs of words that are identical in every way. Couch and sofa are perfectly acceptable synonyms for English speakers but couch comes from a French verb meaning lie down flat. While the origins of the word sofa lie an Arabic term meaning long stone bench. I'm Christi the wordsmith of the day for the horse. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry Web dot com.