How does that work?

An interesting conversation distracted my coworkers for a few minutes and I this evening and has left me unable to fall asleep.

We got to talking about words, made up words that everyone uses (like irrespective, a non-word since 1927 that so far hasn't gained favor, and those that use it are looked down upon -- use regardless instead), and words that are internally redundant. The example being ravel and unravel.

Ravel and unravel mean the same thing. It's one of those situations where people didn't know what they were saying, but they said it enough that it became its own word, which was a synonym for the word that they should have been using in the first place. Confusing? Well, yeah a little, but nothing we can't handle, especially since it's been in the lexicon for quite some time now.

I suppose that's all fine and good -- that's how languages evolve. But what's keeping up tonight is why the thesaurus lists ravel and unravel as having synonyms that are completely different, in fact contradictory of each other, if the two words are actually synonyms for each other. That's like saying A equals B, but B does not equal A. If you're not a Zen monk, it leaves you scratching your head. English is weird.

And that's what's keeping me up tonight.