Ok ok… I’ll be the one…
“Wrongly”
no worries I’ll use it the wrongliest
You can always go wrongliester!
I’ll use it righteously.
I’m gonna use it wrongteously
not not-heinous
Good wrongliesterness.
He wrongly assumed he was using the word wrongly.
Very bigly, indeed!
Incidentally, I really hate that the UK expression for when someone is feeling sick is “poorly”.
It’s got the “ly” ending which is one of the clear signs of an adverb, and in other contexts it is used as an adverb. But, for some reason the British have turned it into an adjective meaning sick. Sometimes they use it in a way where it can be seen as an adverb: “He’s feeling poorly”, in which case it seems to be modifying “feeling”. In the North American dialect you could substitute the adjective “sick”: “He’s feeling sick”. But, other times they say “She won’t be coming in today, she’s poorly”. What is the adverb modifying there, “is”?
Washing-up fluid.
Washing up what?
Dishes?
Dishwasher fluid.
Why fluid, not liquid? Air is a fluid too. Is it in gaseous form?
Also, why “washing-up”? Was “washing” not enough? Was a direction strictly necessary?
Plasma?
Think different
Some flat adverbs sound perfectly natural to most speakers, like “play nice” or “drive safe”. Others have less acceptability among people in general, like “That tastes real good.”
Tastes real goodly.
I don’t even see “nice” in “play nice” as an adverb. You could switch “play” for “be” – “be nice”, same with “be safe”.
There’s that old line that if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bicycle. Maybe the command form is muddling the topic here, but using the be-verb with an adjective like that attaches a subject complement, essentially describing the subject. But “I am fast” describing a person doesn’t mean that saying “I drive fast” is describing a drive as a noun.
Playly not nice.
I’m gonna get the shit downvoted out of me for this, but the problem with this idea is that insular communities tend to redefine words and then expect everyone outside their bubble to know their new definition. Doing so also robs the language of a word that served a specific purpose, such as in the case of the word “literally.”
And then the speakers from insular communities get told to fuck off with their special definitions, or they’re so persistent that the new definition catches on. Either way, problem solved.
The word “literally” still serves its old purpose just fine, along with the new one.
My issue with “literally” is that it’s become an actual part of the dictionary definition rather than being recognized as merely a hyperbolic use of the word.
Dictionaries are books of history, not law.
Language pedantry is a branch of theology.
Those two sentences are not mutually exclusive.
But every word can be used hyperbolically.
no, it can’t. hyperbole means to exaggerate, to a great degree. descriptors like “round” or “soft” can’t be hyperbolic.
Calling fat people round is hyperbole isn’t it?
Or calling a bald guy “Curly”
no, it’s either true or false, but even a false usage isn’t hyperbolic, it’s just wrong
It really depends on how they are built. I have deffo seen some rounder obese people.
Dictionaries can also note hyperbolic (and other “deformed”) uses of words, especially when commonplace, I see no problem with that. You have some odd expectations from dictionaries.
A dictionary is a record.
Language influences the dictionary, the dictionary doesn’t influence language.
Did that literally happen?
Or has actual fallen foul of another meaning change too now?
It’s a definition in Merriam-Webster as of several years ago.
My pet example is Americans and “ironically/unironically”.
Please don’t do this to me
Literally.
I literally love and hate this comment.
Lol, I came here to make this exact comment
That’s dumb (which originally meant “mute” or “unable to speak”)
This is real and actually quite interesting to look at the history of. For example, the word “Decimate” IIRC was originally defined as killing one for every ten people of a group of people. Now, its used as a term for high impact destruction.
My usual example is manufacture — to make by hand, but it’s more commonly used now to mean machine manufactured and made by hand is called handmade.
That’s a good one. In school they had me memorize a novel of Latin root words, which is where things can get frustrating. You take a word and piece together the meaning, only to find out the definition has changed so drastically over the years that the root words are now nonsense. Both of our examples fit this description.
Yeah, I’m prone to go down rabbit holes looking at the etymology and origin of related words for hours. Latin was one of my favorite classes in high school. It’s great for world building and stylizing prose when writing fiction.
Sometimes the etymology is just weird because the current meaning is from an abbreviation of a phrase and the roots don’t make sense in isolation, such as perfidious, from the roots per fidem “through faith” but its meaning is from the larger phrase “deceiving through faith.”
Mine is electrocuted which means to die or get executed by electricity but people say “the person got electrocuted and is recovering in the hospital”.
I mean, I’d still call 1 out of 10 people dying “high impact.”
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Yay, pseudoliteracy wins. Again. 🤢
It was originally killing 1 in every 10 by lot. In other words, not in battle, but as a collective punishment of a unit 1 in 10 soldiers would be randomly selected and killed.
1 in 10 soldiers dying in a battle doesn’t sound all that bad. But, 1 in 10 soldiers being selected to be killed as a form of punishment for the unit sounds a lot worse.
IIRC the other nine had to kill them, by beating with sticks? which makes it so much worse. Rarely used in extremis I believe.
Well. Sort of.
Some terminology is better defined by how the relevant experts use it. It’s singular and precise definition is required for any useful dialogue. If 99% of people call a kidney a liver but doctors call it a kidney its a kidney.
Some terminology evolves and is used differently by different groups. Sometimes the more illiterate group flattens the language by removing nuance or even entirely removing a concept from a language with no replacement. Arguably both definitions may be common usage but one is worse and using it means you are.
Some word usage just becomes so common everyone, even generational gaps understand it. If you talk to an 18 or a 65 year old and say the word blowjob, they both know what you mean, yet they aren’t out there blowing on dicks or trying to force air up urethras… Hopefully…
I feel like people forget that words can have multiple definitions. You can have a technical definition and a popular definition
And I’m still gonna bitch about it if they’ve reduced the usefulness of a word due to habitual misuse!
But do you mean literally everyone or literally everyone?
If it is not literally everyone, it still might be correct in the way that using a word for (one of) its jargon meaning(s) is correct. So, correct in context.
When using words to convey information to an audience to whom you might not be able to clarify, it is useful to use words for the meanings listed in common dictionar(y/ies) (“correctly”) so that the audience can resolve confusions through those dictionaries.
I think they were joking about the fact that the meaning of ‘literally’ has changed in the common vernacular to mean ‘figuratively’
I mean this i show it literally works, right?
My two are Literally, and Crescendo. I really hate it when they are used wrong, and now the wrong answers are considered acceptable. That means Literally actually holds no meaning at all, and by changing the definition of Crescendo, the last 500 years of Western Music Theory have been changed by people who have no understanding of music at all.
I was not aware of the crescendo one and looked it up. Imagine my surprise learning this dates back at least 100 years ago with the Great Gatsby (have not read it). I am now irrationaly angry that I’m learning about this way too late to complain about it.
Literally being used in the absurdist manner also dates back to the 1800s
I knew that and wasn’t irrationally angry at this one. A hyperbolic or absurd meaning does not bother me (but I get that its “overuse”, for a while, could).
Literally holds meaning, two meanings principally. They just happen to be opposite. “Literally” could mean either “actually” or “not actually, but similar in a way”, but wouldn’t ever mean “duck”.
“Literally” only holds the opposite meaning when used as a hyperbole.
You should literally literally when a literally flies straight for your face because those feathered fowl can be as aggressive as gooses.
How do you feel about other words with their own opposite meanings, like dust or sanction? If the meaning isn’t clear it’s almost always because the speaker constructed a sentence poorly, which of course can lead to misunderstandings even when not using contronyms.
Interesting! TIL
Literally was being used as an intensifier in both cases where it was being used to signify the truth of something and in the absurdist manner. So, no, it didn’t lose all meaning. So long as you’re not emphasizing something too absurd to be considered real, the original meaning still holds. And if someone uses the word to emphasize something that could be real, though unlikely, they’ll likely get the appropriate follow-up.
On the Crescendo one, do you also get mad about forte? Cause basically the same thing happened there. And no one will confuse the music term for the colloquial term in either case.
I hadn’t really thought about forte, but now that you mention it, yeah, that one pisses me off, too. Thinking about it, I do avoid using that term.
And Literally is supposed to mean that some thing is truly as described, to differentiate between exaggeration. So when it is used as exaggeration, it causes the sort of confusion that means exactly what the literal meaning is literally supposed to avoid.
Heaven forbid someone use a colloquialism! How will they ever be understood?
(For the sake of clarity I feel I must point out that I do not believe Heaven should, in fact, forbid such a practice. I fear without this clarification my first sentence is impossible to understand.)
You shouldn’t use religious slang in your writing, it offends the Puritans.
“Heaven” originally meant “the visible sky” so this is fine.
That evolution has happened SO many times. Why does “literally” give you fits when “awful” or “terrific” do not? Perhaps because it’s the shift you happen to be living through?
Or maybe those other things shouldn’t have happened, but it’s too late for them. Now we have to save the words that are in danger now.
If a boat is sinking, and I’m saying we have to save those people, would the proper response be “Well, where were you when the Titanic was going down? Why aren’t you all worried about them?”
Words aren’t “endangered”. There are literally an infinite number of potential words, if we need to reinvent a meaning, we can quite easily(see: synonym). Further, the original meanings still exist. You can still use “awful” to mean “inspiring awe” and you’re correct, you just won’t be understood.
This guy is trying to mop up the beach every time the tide comes in.
Nah, I’m just fighting the battle for Literally and Crescendo. Those are my hills to die on. I can’t save the entire literary world by myself.
Those words are already lost.
Holy shit, that’s good
It uses figurative language instead of the literal meaning of words so it’s complete nonsense.
I think “whence” is a near-perfect example. “Whence” means “from what origin”.
The word is used nearly exclusively in the phrase “from whence it came”, or “from (from what origin) it came”
Love it.
“I have to return back to the ATM machine, but I forgot my PIN number.”
For all intensive purposes, the meaning of words matters less than how we use it. Irregardless of how we decimate it’s meaning, so long as we get the point across there is no need to nip it in the butt. Most people could care less.
What if I told you memes were supposed to be funny rather than excusing ignorance?
ok here’s three examples of exactly what the meme is referring to:
-
“Awful” originally meant “awe-inspiring” or “full of awe,” but frequent use to mean “very bad” eventually became the standard modern meaning.
-
“Peruse” traditionally meant “to read carefully,” but common casual use to mean “to skim or browse” has become widespread enough that dictionaries now record both senses.
-
“Nimrod” started as the name of a skilled biblical hunter, but repeated ironic use as an insult (for example, in cartoons… “Bugs Bunny”) led to its accepted modern sense of “fool” or “idiot.”
Language changes. Words mean what we say they mean since its all made up anyway.
The word that always comes to mind is ‘literally’ which has come to mean ‘figuratively, but with emphasis’ and it drives me nuts - because it removes the word we have to say ‘this is a thing that you might assume is figurative, but it’s not, it actually happened’.
Allow me to introduce you to my favorite portmanteau, “legiterally”
Okay, that’s actually kinda great.
I was going to be that one in my list but I literally hate using the word …. 😉
These are your examples, not OPs. Your examples have no bearing on what OP may or may not have meant.
The content implies to me that OP have themselves been criticized and since your examples are all relatively antiquated I’m going to assume OP didn’t mean them. Because who alive is out there saying “nimrod was actually pretty skilled” on lemmy?
The other alternative which is even worse is that OP literally just means language changes and this isn’t in response to anything at all, it’s just a pointless generic post restating a truism. But I choose not to believe that one either, although it seems to be the interpretation you’ve espoused.
Nimrod” started as the name of a skilled biblical hunter, but repeated ironic use as an insult (for example, in cartoons… “Bugs Bunny”) led to its accepted modern sense of “fool” or “idiot.”
Nimrod in the X-Men was badass. Probably more fitting to the original definition of the word.
-
Ignorance of what? It seems that if you’re using a word the same way your sub culture uses a word, it’s correct. Or rather that words can only be used correctly within a context.
That’s the beauty of this terrible, terrible post: by not being remotely specific we can all imagine what word OP might be thinking of and imagine for ourselves whether it’s justified.
So perhaps a better phrasing would be “memes are supposed to be funny, not generic rage bait”
Memes are supposed to be funny
That’s not true, which is exactly why this is a good meme. The word meme was originally coined as a conceptual analogue to the word "gene*. Ideas spread and evolve, just like genes. Only in the last 15 years or so has it come to mean internet joke, and this is the direct result of people using the word in a different way than it was intended to be used. It doesn’t matter what word the OP had in mind when they made this meme (though gif is the most likely candidate), it’s accurate and relevant.
Right, so memes are supposed to be funny cause they are internet jokes.
Oh, so you just don’t even understand the meme, now I get why you’re so upset! I recommend starting by reading the words left-to-right, top-to-bottom. If you don’t know how to pronounce one, just do your best. You can also ask an adult to help you, if there’s one nearby.
Your msg too long so ignore
Monosodium glutamate isn’t even that long, what a weenie
facts about natural processes don’t need “justification”
rage bait
that’s in the eye of the beholder & Y U MAD, THO?
Right which is what I’m saying makes this a boring rage bait meme. It doesn’t contribute anything but triggers memories of conversations. Some people will think of things where they were annoyed at someone clearly misusing a word because they are stupid, then claiming “bro language, like, flows and shit”. Some people will think of (apparently, according to some other responder), people getting butthurt that the original 10000 year old meaning of the word nimrod got corrupted over time and think “yeah, language changes, think of all those nimrods”. But it doesn’t take a real stance or so anything interesting other than trigger feelings of annoyance in one direction or the other. So it’s rage bait.
¿ Por Que No Los Dos ?
Dos is fine but I really just want it to be funny
Honestly, I could care less about this shit.
Do you care a lot or only a little?
I told you, I could care less! It’s a moot point!
But, how much less could you care? Alot less?
Ah, my favourite.
Gets my brain scrambling for what caring less than zero could be.
Negative care…
Turtles.
I literally don’t give a shit
And I don’t want any of your shit.
I grew up on dairy farm and it was one of my chores to shove the shit and then spread that shit nearly everyday. So I’ve had enough shit. I’m so done with that shit and the assholes it came out of. And I don’t need anyone giving me shit anymore either.
So you just keep your shit to yourself.
Cow shit’s not that bad.
Don’t tell me that’s bullshit.
I have walked in that shit, slipped in that shit, I have even fallen in that shit. Cow shit smells and tastes just as bad as the finest Bull shit. And that bullshit is mixed into that cow shit and the two can’t be separated. No matter how hard you try. And I ain’t dealing with any shit anymore for whatever time is left of my life.
But, I do like drinking my Daily Duck Shit. I have a cup of it right now. I love drinking my Daily Duck Shit and I always try to keep it on hand.
****For those that aren’t fairly deep into Chinese Oolong teas, Duck Shit, “Ya Shi Xiang”, is type of Dan-Cong Oolong tea. You can google Duck Shit tea and get at least one origin story. They are fun stories.
Try pig shit.
I can’t tell if you’re using this idiomatic expression in the wrong way on purpose for a great joke, or in an annoying, unaware way. 😅
Its obviously a joke.
But maybe you understood that and your comment is sarcastic as well. So now I am the one being woooshed.
Is… is your reply sarcastic too? How far does this sarcasm uncertainuum go?
🥸
Everyone has to agree tho.
Don’t be one of these dickheads that defines shit their own way then gets upset when nobody agrees with your dumbass. There’s quite a few people like that here on Lemmy and I find them to be the single most annoying type of user on this site.
It’s better to use words correctly, but in ways that call your understanding of the definition into question.
“I hacked into my sister’s facebook when she left it open on her laptop.”
“In an act of philanthropy I gave George the rest of my fries.”
“Mr. Hands died for his passion, a modern day saint.”
“Tiamat is a Bad Dragon.”
Minor gripe - it’s not right to say that everyone has to agree, but it is sensible to point out that one person has no real basis for having unique meanings for terms and then reacting poorly when others fail to use them.
Every word had an evolution or hard origin, and each stepping stone on those journeys had some first user. By whatever means, some of those new words or new tweaks on existing words caught on and spread.
And sometimes, despite generally widespread acceptance of a change or a new word, some folks will bitterly hold on to the old ways for years or decades until they just die wrong about it.
By whatever means, some of those new words or new tweaks on existing words caught on and spread.
By whatever memes . . .
Yeah TRVE, making a point of intentionally being dumb usually means you’re an insufferable cvnt
I’ve allready to rite we’ll, but than my conscious sad, “For get the rules,” so I let my lose ideals led me. I’m two stubborn to accept that I should of staid in school.
I think I had a stroke reading this.
Yes, but you understood it eventually, so you can’t criticize it.
Understanding something eventually isn’t the same as understanding it immediately. The latter is necessary for effective communication. I don’t have the brain power or neurotype to decipher a text like I would if it were latin.
I’m not saying that you should shut up if you genuinely can’t help it. That’s ok. I’ll figure it out. We can both communicate with each other to the best of our abilities and I won’t mind at all.
But if you can, you should try to be considerate. If you think you spending slightly less time on it is worth me having to spend much more time on understanding it, I find that to be a dick move and I won’t give you the time of day forever.
All in good fun.
My arms were too short to reach.
Can I have some more pixels please
deleted by creator
April I have more pixels please
June I have more pixels please.<- period
I don’t know, june you?
Just June?
Not every month?
Would you mind providing us a few more pixels? Only if it is no trouble o’course.
/j
