Elegant variation

Elegant variation is the unnecessary, and sometimes misleading, use of synonyms to denote a single thing, driven by an imbalance in compositional tone in which an attempt to maintain euphony by avoiding monotonous repetition degrades clarity and inadvertently introduces a different kind of tonal problem (such as unintended humor or attention-drawing eccentricity). Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933) coined the name elegant variation for this phenomenon. In his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (first edition, 1926), Fowler wrote: