Quick, Grab A Thesaurus

211 words.

One thing I find amusing about the media, and now the blogosphere, is the number of different ways that writers say the same thing. No writer wants to sound like he’s plagerizing someone else, so the result is often a hilarious variety of randomly mixed-up words from a thesaurus. Here’s a selection from bloggers talking about the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Iraq:

“on the precipice of full-scale civil war” - “the country careened to the brink of civil war” - “it was designed to flare a civil war” - “The possibility of a full-scale civil war is quite real” - “on the brink of civil war” - “Iraq teeters towards civil war” - “the gates of hell open onto a civil war” - “Iraq is not on the brink of civil war” - “rejected the idea of a brewing civil war” - “Sectarian violence rips through Iraq” - “fearful of civil war” - “on the verge of a full civil war” - “a “for real” civil war” - “on the verge of a full-blown civil war” - “a civil war looming in Iraq” - “to pull Iraq into a sectarian civil war” - “situation is careening towards civil war” - “a lethal step closer to disintegration and civil war”

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