'Scofflaw' and Inventing Words for Money
Word Matters
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The Synonyms of Mustaches and Whiskers
The first monolingual dictionary that we know of is about 1604. In other words, not only were they both used in the plural. So cats have whiskers. That's 1634. We usually refer to them as a group as a plural. They were perfectly synonymous for people or men and used for cats. It's true that we don't use mustache to mean a cat's whiskers anymore. But to say whiskers of a cat in French, you say moustache. You do say plural of mustaches. so that term has remained in French, but not in English.
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