In one of my posts (Are "beaten" and "punched" interchangeable in some situations?) I said
"Alice was beaten to death."
"Alice was punched to death."
Do they mean the same?
I found lots of learners use the same expression, e.g. "Do the two clauses mean the same?", "Do these two sentences mean the same?", "they mean the same or not?", etc.
I also found lots of answerers use expressions like "mean the same thing", which has an extra "thing". For example, a nice answer says
"defined as" and "defined to be" both mean the same thing …
Is that extra "thing" optional or necessary? In other words, are "mean the same" and "mean the same thing" interchangeable in any cases?
Best Answer
"mean the same" is actually not correct grammar. The reason for this is that the direct object of a verb ("to mean") needs to be a noun of some kind. However "same" is not a noun, it is an adjective, which means it needs to have some other noun to modify.
So this is why the normal expression is "they mean the same thing". "thing" is the noun, which is modified by the adjective "same".
Alternatively, you can say something like:
This is also OK, because here "same" is modifying the noun "meaning".
(Note, occasionally you will find "the same" used as a noun, but this is generally only in certain fixed expressions (such as "the very same"), not a general usage.)