synonymous with or of?

What's the difference between "synonymous with" and "synonymous of"?

Like in the sentence:

"The satirist, poet and rake whose name became synonymous with debauchery."

"Synonymous of" isn't correct. You can say "a synonym of", but not "synonymous of". You say "synonymous with".

Thank you Guest.

I was confused, because I googled for "synonymous of" and there were 81.500 results for it.

Googling doesn't prove anything, dammit! I wish people would stop citing their Google search numbers as some kind of proof or authority. People make grammatical and spelling mistakes all the time, pages get counted multiple times, the search finds any page that simply contains both of your words even if they're not in the same sentence, etc., etc. Just because you "find" something on the internet doesn't "prove" that it's correct, accurate, or in common use. For instance, I've accidentally typed in search words that I've misspelled, and still found plenty of sites -- all that means is that lots of people have made the same frickin' typo!

>>I was confused, because I googled for "synonymous of" and there were 81.500 results for it. <<

But "synonymous with" gets 22,000,000 hits. Do the math: 100% of 22m/ (22m+0.0815m) and you'll see this represents over 99.96% ... while "synonymous of" represents under 0.4% . Forgetting the maths it's obvious anyway.

So the way to use Google properly is to compare the hits from both phrases.

No. Don't use Google as a an authority on usage at all. Use real people.

Do what you want but real people aren't authorities either.

In any case, real people are behind those pages that brought up the Google hits. So if do you google something, put it into perspective as above comparative in terms of %.

Any time you do serious research, you have to consider the veracity and relevance of your sources. It's like reading the news. Are you getting your info from a respected reporting agency, or from the National Enquirer? The internet is full of National Enquirers. All Google does is count 'em. And probably not that accurately.

The same thing goes for the "real" people you choose for your sources in learning English. Are you getting your info from English teachers, shills or skateboarding teenagers? Well, they are all valid and have their place. Google just gives you such a cross-section but on a massive scale which is easily accessible.

People are certainly going to use Google anyway, so they may as well learn to use the counts meaningfully as illustrated above. If tens of millions of people speak a certain way compared to only a few thousand, I know how one is expected to conform.

I must support Guest on this one. No, google and the internet are not credible sources for university papers and such, but to figure out the correct grammar of a particular idiom... playing the google number game is extremely useful. Most people use the correct convention; hence the term convention!