Dear Geist,

interchangeable? If so, why do we need both?

Dear Cleia,

which refers to the ability to create fiction: “Anna is a writer of great fictive talent.”

Language is alive; words and phrases are always evolving with use. Some go dormant for a while, some rise and fall in a heartbeat, some become interchangeable with other words, some disappear forever. At any moment we could theoretically do without lots of words, but it would be hard to get agreement on it from all English speakers.