The Synonym Game – Play It Only If Game Conditions Are Right

  (Because this is an excerpt from a larger article,
“Future Predictions About Legal Writing: Redundancies and Musings,”
footnotes start at 57)

by Kenneth Bresler
Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 2014–2015

I advise against using multiple synonyms in your writing. Just call a spade a spade, not a shovel, then a digging implement, then a handheld excavation device. Nonetheless, Justice Kaganused multiple synonyms in a 2014 Supreme Court opinion – deftly and effectively.

Justice Kagan’s first paragraph in Abramski v. United States introduced the case’s issue and a key phrase, straw purchaser:

Before a federally licensed firearms dealer may sell a gun, the would-be purchaser must provide certain personal information, show photo identification, and pass a background check. . . . In this case, we consider how that law applies to a so-called straw purchaser – namely, a person who buys a gun on someone else’s behalf while falsely claiming that it is for himself. We hold that such a misrepresentation is punishable under the statute, whether or not the true buyer could have purchased the gun without the straw.⁵⁷

In discussing how she reached that holding on behalf of the Court, Justice Kagan could have repeated straw purchaser, varying it with straw buyer (which she did use once⁵⁸) and straw or straws (which she also used⁵⁹). But Justice Kagan went further. She used:

• the middleman⁶⁰
• the conduit at the counter,⁶¹ meaning the counter of the gun store
• mere conduits⁶²
• an intermediary (twice)⁶³
• a hired deliveryman⁶⁴
• [d]eliverymen⁶⁵
• the nominal buyer⁶⁶
• the fictitious purchaser⁶⁷
• the fictitious . . . buyer⁶⁸
• the frontman⁶⁹
• the hidden purchaser⁷⁰

Brilliant.

One reason for a writer not to play the synonym game is that it risks confusing the reader. A reader can be left wondering: by using different words, did the writer intend different things?

Justice Kagan risked no such confusion. Her first paragraph made it clear that she was writing about straw purchasers. By using multiple synonyms –  pejorative ones – she was editorializing.

Another reason not to play with synonyms is that a writer often keeps playing after he or she has run out of good ones. For example, spade doesn’t have good synonyms. Trying to come up with synonyms makes a writer imprecise  – a shovel is not really a spade  – and ridiculous, as in handheld excavation device.

Justice Kagan did not run out of synonyms. The only one I can think of that she didn’t use is proxy. And maybe she avoided it because it has its own legal meaning.

Still, I discourage you from playing the synonym game (especially in contracts). The lesson from Justice Kagan is not that you can play the game if you’re on the Supreme Court. The lesson is that if the right game conditions converge, writing with multiple synonyms works.

⁵⁷ 134 S. Ct. 2259, 2262–63 (2014).
⁵⁸ Id. at 2266 n.4.
⁵⁹ E.g., id. at 2263, 2266, 2273.
⁶⁰ Id. at 2267.
⁶¹ Id.
⁶² Id. at 2268.
⁶³ Id. at 2268, 2269.
⁶⁴ Id. at 2269.
⁶⁵ Id.
⁶⁶ Id. at 2270.
⁶⁷ Id. at 2272.
⁶⁸ Id. at 2269.
⁶⁹ Id. at 2272.
⁷⁰ Id. at 2273.