In spontaneous talk, speakers occasionally use one expression where another one might be expected. For example, a caller to a radio talk-show, complaining about getting reliable travel information from a telephone helpline, outlines the complexity of their freelance work arrangements by saying that they do not have a ‘regular timetable’. Although this is unproblematic, an expression such as a ‘regular schedule’ might be expected. However, the word ‘timetable‘ is closely fitted to their overarching topic: rail travel, where we commonly speak of a train timetable. Although the speaker‘s choice of a near-synonym (‘timetable’ rather than ‘schedule’) involves a semantic connection between two related terms, it does more than this. Drawing on Jefferson’s (1996) analysis of the poetics of word-choices in conversation, this chapter proposes that near-synonyms can have an intimate relationship to a speaker’s course of action; they can foreshadow what the speaker is going to say, or do, and thereby can help to achieve understanding.