I know what these words mean. Air is humid and sponges are damp, but in either case it means "slightly wet" and there is very little chance of confusion.
There are valid reasons to have more words, such as English's seven distinct words for horse as opposed to German's five (depending on sex and age of the animal in question). Those words do make a useful distinction that experts care about, but there are so many English words where the extra information they convey is completely redundant.
I feel the same way about the 16+ ways to say 'the' in German.
(And before you retort with 'but those are grammatically important!' Let me say yes, I agree, they are, and because you live within the language, you implicitly understand why. Let's just say that as an English speaker, I feel the same way about English's tendency to have a million synonyms for everything. Each one has its own, distinct flavor, and such aggressive vocabulary theft* is a fundamental part of English's charm.)
* “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
No, but it is pork (while pork is most often used for meat, it can be used for live pigs, especially those destined for meat, and structurally differs from “pig” in such use largely in that it is a mass, rather than countable, noun.)
> A rain-forest is humid but not dank
A rainforest absolutely can be dank, as well as merely humid.
> These words have reason to exist and have particular usages
While that's true, the particular current usages aren't the historical reason they exist in many cases, it's just a result of how overlapping meanings have shaken out to be more (but not completely) distinct over time.
But only if necessary. In most cases the "meat" either implied ("What kind of meat is that?" "Pig") or replaced by the specific name of the cut (Schweineschnitzel, Putenbrust, Lammkotlett).
They only exist because nobles wanted to pretend that the food they eat is so much fancier than that of the peasants, so they insisted on using French to describe it.
Assuming that this is true, that also adds a distinct meaning to the word so that saying "pork" as opposed to "pig meat" would have served as an indication of class status in addition to e.g. what you'll be eating for dinner.
I think a better proof would be “chicken” in English. If we get by without the distinction for one animal, it doesn’t make sense that we’d need it for another.
The poster I replied to said there was 'no useful distinction' between the words, which is provably false. They are synonyms, not the same words, despite the fact that their usages might overlap in many contexts, there are contexts where only one is really appropriate.
A pig is not a pork.
A rain-forest is humid but not dank, a cellar may be dank.
Food is moist, not damp, etc etc.
These words have reason to exist and have particular usages.