wolfscarf pairs
the other day i noticed that it is kind of funny that “wolf” and “scarf” are synonyms. their primary meanings could hardly be more semantically distant. i started to think, there probably are many more pairs of words like this, and i was able to identify a bunch:
- wolf, scarf
- spike, lace
- bomb, flop
- pooped, fried
- axe, sack
- fleece, soak
- ghost, ditch
- grill, press
- torch, tank
i‘ve never heard anyone talk about this before, and i haven’t been able to find any references to this phenomenon online, so i’ve taken the liberty of naming them ”wolfscarf pairs”. in a way, it’s the opposite of a pun, where instead of two unrelated meanings coincidentally having the same word, it’s two unrelated words coincidentally having the same meaning. for that reason, it probably doesn’t lend itself well to wordplay, but i can imagine someone constructing puzzles from wolfscarf pairs
note: you can have whole wolfscarf sets, e.g. {wolf, scarf, bolt, raven, inhale}, but i find the pairs a little more satisfying because sometimes in the sets some pairs of words feel more related than others (e.g. scarf and bolt are both fabric related words, wolf and raven are both voracious animals)