A few weeks ago I saw a poster on a notice board at my local supermarket which read: “Professional couple searching apartment in Lund”.
This notice was up for several weeks and always left me with the image of a smartly-dressed couple desperately rummaging around an apartment, having lost something so important that they felt the urge to announce this to the shoppers of Lund.
The couple (who I am guessing were not native English speakers) probably meant to say:
“Professional couple seeking apartment in Lund” or “Professional couple searching for apartment in Lund”.
It is a good example of synonyms behaving in sneaky ways. In English, synonyms (of which there are plenty) are always not seamlessly interchangeable. Here’s a classic example:
“They were talking English to each other.” Far better to say: “They were speaking English to each other”, even though “talking” and “speaking” are clearly synonyms.
Anyway, I hope the couple finally found what they were looking for. An apartment, that is.
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