In a recent speech, Senator Ted Cruz said:
… And under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Would it have also been correct to use synonyms such as obtain, secure,attain, reach, gain, etc.? As an English learner, I don't see any differences. So, I often have a problem making a selection from among a group of synonyms and wonder if there is a convention that native speakers use to choose the best word over its synonyms. Given multiple options for a suitable word (i.e. synonyms), what selection process (if any) do native speakers follow to select one word in particular?
Best Answer
An in-depth answer to this question could probably fill a book; I'm just going to scratch the surface.
As native speakers (of any language, certainly not just English) learn their language, they form an intricate network of associations with and between all of the words they know in their language. These associations become so ingrained in the native speaker's use of his or her language that their influence largely goes unnoticed (i.e. subconscious).
These associations in the native speaker's brain represent much, much more information about a word than its basic (dictionary) definition. This extra information includes a word's connotation(s), its collocations, level of formality, idiomatic uses and expressions, its antonyms, its synonyms, and so on.
I suspect (please note that I am stating this much more as my opinion than as cold, hard fact) that this level of knowledge of a word is very difficult for second-language learners to achieve, cannot readily be acquired in a classroom environment (i.e. from "book learning"), and develops over months and years through natural immersion and experience with the language.
To address your question a little more specifically, native speakers choose a word based on their comprehensive, lifelong experience with their own language. After encountering and using a word hundreds or even thousands of times, sorting through and considering all of these countless associations and possibilities to find the right word is something our brains do so quickly as to make it seem instantaneous. (Not to say we always get it right, though.)