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Can you please counsel me on how to rewrite https://ell.stackexchange.com/q/63114/10711, for a reopening? Can this be reopened, if I ask just for one or 2 "underlying ideas or metaphors"?

Ironically, it is closed "as too broad" but "as" 'S broadness is exactly my problem! Thank you all.

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This isn't really an etymology site, and neither is it a linguistics site.

As you know, I'm not one of the users who voted to close your question, but I don't disagree with what they did.

The reason is pretty simple: the relationships between the various meanings of as could easily be a chapter in any good textbook on the English language.

Also, differences/relationships between words are far, far easier to explain than relationships between a word's meanings (vagueness and ambiguity are much-studied phenomena in linguistics.

As FumbleFingers mentioned function words have little lexical meaning, and generally relate one part of speech to another.

So yeah, it really is too broad at the moment in my opinion.

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    Also, just as an aside, just because it doesn't fit the format of this site doesn't mean it isn't an interesting or good question. It seems like the shorter a word is in English, the more challenging it is to understand all of its functions and meanings ;)
    – ColleenV
    Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 20:04
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What do you mean by "I ask just for one or 2 "underlying ideas or metaphors"?

I don't know what you want.

I will help if I can.

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