h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Which English Language word has the most synonyms? And which word has the most spellings (you know, like Dear and Deer...). And anything similar.

The Guinness Book of records used to have all this sort of endlessly useful stuff (endlessly useful when you have am 8 year old who never stops asking questions), but the book has been taken over by a modern design team who have acrefull stripped it of all useful content, replacing it with total dross. Sorry - rant over.

I think we are talking about homonyms at least as much as synonyms here aren't we?

Anyway with that thought in mind I want to nominate THERE both as in " there you go again" and " their ideas are not my ideas, and even " they're are a lot of of people looking for ways to use their are there not?
blanoir

sorry I see I goofed There are too many "are"s in one of my examples. And I started to use the wrong too (i.e.two) in trying to fit all the theres in2 my post!
blanoir (what again!)

"Drinking" and "drunk" have hundreds of synonyms, from "guzzle" to "sacrifice at the shrine of Bacchus". New ones get added all the time, and are obvious from context. "He's getting blivered" obviously means "He's getting drunk", even though I just made it up.

--Milton--

I'll drink to that, 'Hic'

What about mad? From crazy, doolally, bonkers and thats just the beginning of the alphabet. The list is endless........and there must be lots of local examples from all over the world. Any good ones from the Antipodes that we may not have heard of?

Mostly we use expressions, like "a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock", "sausage short of a barbecue" etc. But there are also words like dipstick (from dippy, I guess), and the list goes on...

According to numerous sources, there are more words and phrases meaning to be drunk than any other thingunajig in the entirety of the English language This is no doubt because getting blottoed , trolleyed, pissed, ratted etc is a central part to our culture.

My favourite synonym for the state of inebriation is 'shiters'!

mine is "schnockered, or shnockered"