From time to time I notice people misusing a word. Here are examples: “Exponential” has a well defined mathematical meaning but a lot of people think it means “large.” 2 4 8 16 is an exponential series but so is 1/2 1/4 1/8 1/16. It makes no sense to say that one number is exponentially greater than another.
Regarding the "language is evolving" argument. Language evolves as the users change its usage. I am a user. I choose to not change the language keeping its evolution right where it is. If the majority doesn't like that, tough. I'm trying to evolve the language back to the original from which they evolved it.
[This was also in the comment thread for my previous post]
A question for commenters that has nothing to do with this post.
I have considered offering a paid option for my posts. It would provide nothing not available with the free option, just a way for people to pay me if they feel like it. I don't need the money, would probably pass it on to the Institute for Justice, the one charity I routinely support.
My reason to do it is largely my memory of my relation with SSC, which for some time was a majority of my time online. I arranged to pay money to Scott's Patreon because I was getting a large benefit from his work and felt I owed him payment. I'm not sure if enough people would feel that way about my posts to make it worth offering the option, or whether there might be negative effects.
My latest argument on Youtube is about atheism and agnostic.
I said, "look, everyone has their own connotation, so using the label is functionally useless, except just in polite non-specific discussion."
But this guy wanted to stick to some idea of what a dictionary said and what common usage was for "100 years" to tell me I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic.
I'm like, "dude, I don't believe in a God or gods so I'm an atheist. Period."
What speculation about what might be possible doesn't change me to an agnostic. Jesus.
Urggggg....and the pedo thing, I get tired of correcting people on this one as they think it makes me some kind of advocate or fan of predators.
Sorry, but if you only consult the DM-5 you'll see that if pedo means anyone under the age of consent then every straight man in America was a pedeophile back when Britney Spears was 17 or when the movie Blue Lagoon was in theaters.
Interesting trivia about that, assuming this story isn't anecdotal, Brooke Shields was called to testify before Congress, in the version I heard, to state for the record that they used a stunt double for the topless scene and that whenever she was on camera, her breasts were covered with hair that was glued to her body....
Americans are just weird, at least that's what the French tell me.
The problem is that the words lost have not been replaced by substitutes conveying the same meaning. Since "crisis" has come to mean the same thing as "problem" we don't have a word that means what crisis used to mean. Same with "incredible" and "unbelievable,"which no longer refer to things things that are not credible or not believable.
I'm pedantic when it comes to words, but I'll be honest, turning a normal (or birthday-sounding) phrase like "begging the question" into an idiom and then shaming people for using it literally is a d**k move.
My biggest pet peeve is "algorithm." An algorithm is an abstract computational process for solving a problem. Many people think algorithms are inherently intrusive on their privacy and that software should be written without algorithms. Software without algorithms would be coding by guesswork and would be so buggy it would be useless.
In a computer science class many years ago, I was taught that order of magnitude doesn't necessarily mean factors of ten, but depends on the context/scale in question. It often does mean powers of ten, because most of what we discuss is measured in decimal. However, if I say I have one megabyte of storage available on my flash drive but I actually have thirty, I am off by (approximately) five orders of magnitude, not one. Perhaps this usage is specific to computer science, however.
John McWhorter has pointed out that 'literally' has been used in the way you describe going back at least to the 19th century. The meaning of words changes over time etc. I do think that this usage of 'literally' can interfere with the usage of the word to mean 'not figurative' , and I find that annoying.
The phrase I've enjoyed puzzling over lately is 'intermittent fasting'. I've known a number of methods of fasting, but I've never known a single one that was not intermittent. At least one done by choice.
> “Chemical” is used as a vague negative term for the sorts of icky things that organic food is supposed to not have.
Personally I think all chemicals should be banned, the worst one of which is Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), a colourless odourless liquid used as an industrial solvant and a coolant in nuclear power stations. Did you know that in autopsies, many people who died of cancer had traces of DHMO in their bodies? Join my campaign to ban DHMO now!
I recall reading a Matt Helm pulp novel in the mid 1970s. Mr. Helm knew that a message was not authentic because the purported author would never use the phrase ‘decimated to the last man.’
Words mean what they're commonly used to mean. Dictionaries describe usage, and that's what dictionary compilers think they're doing. They're not trying to tell people what words should mean, they're describing the things they can mean.
Literally has meant figuratively for literally thousands of years.
And if you're going to insist that 'chemical' is a synonym for 'matter' then we'll need another word for 'novel substance which was not commonly present in the environment in which we evolved', which is what people actually mean by 'chemical'. Even *chemists* don't think of water as a chemical, or write 'chemical store' on the doors of all the cupboards where there are things.
I am sad about 'exponential' though, because I can remember when it meant something precise in mathematics. I think it started during the pandemic when people started to use it to mean 'curve bends upwards'. We're going to have to accept that we've lost it and make up another word for the concept of geometric growth.
Regarding the "language is evolving" argument. Language evolves as the users change its usage. I am a user. I choose to not change the language keeping its evolution right where it is. If the majority doesn't like that, tough. I'm trying to evolve the language back to the original from which they evolved it.
[This was also in the comment thread for my previous post]
A question for commenters that has nothing to do with this post.
I have considered offering a paid option for my posts. It would provide nothing not available with the free option, just a way for people to pay me if they feel like it. I don't need the money, would probably pass it on to the Institute for Justice, the one charity I routinely support.
My reason to do it is largely my memory of my relation with SSC, which for some time was a majority of my time online. I arranged to pay money to Scott's Patreon because I was getting a large benefit from his work and felt I owed him payment. I'm not sure if enough people would feel that way about my posts to make it worth offering the option, or whether there might be negative effects.
Opinions?
XKCD will feel stupid when we're all killed because some a**hole used "literally" to an AI.
My latest argument on Youtube is about atheism and agnostic.
I said, "look, everyone has their own connotation, so using the label is functionally useless, except just in polite non-specific discussion."
But this guy wanted to stick to some idea of what a dictionary said and what common usage was for "100 years" to tell me I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic.
I'm like, "dude, I don't believe in a God or gods so I'm an atheist. Period."
What speculation about what might be possible doesn't change me to an agnostic. Jesus.
Urggggg....and the pedo thing, I get tired of correcting people on this one as they think it makes me some kind of advocate or fan of predators.
Sorry, but if you only consult the DM-5 you'll see that if pedo means anyone under the age of consent then every straight man in America was a pedeophile back when Britney Spears was 17 or when the movie Blue Lagoon was in theaters.
Interesting trivia about that, assuming this story isn't anecdotal, Brooke Shields was called to testify before Congress, in the version I heard, to state for the record that they used a stunt double for the topless scene and that whenever she was on camera, her breasts were covered with hair that was glued to her body....
Americans are just weird, at least that's what the French tell me.
For me, all of this is inconceivable!
In regards to abuse, for all intensive purposes there are less words used properly everyday.
The problem is that the words lost have not been replaced by substitutes conveying the same meaning. Since "crisis" has come to mean the same thing as "problem" we don't have a word that means what crisis used to mean. Same with "incredible" and "unbelievable,"which no longer refer to things things that are not credible or not believable.
I'm pedantic when it comes to words, but I'll be honest, turning a normal (or birthday-sounding) phrase like "begging the question" into an idiom and then shaming people for using it literally is a d**k move.
My biggest pet peeve is "algorithm." An algorithm is an abstract computational process for solving a problem. Many people think algorithms are inherently intrusive on their privacy and that software should be written without algorithms. Software without algorithms would be coding by guesswork and would be so buggy it would be useless.
In a computer science class many years ago, I was taught that order of magnitude doesn't necessarily mean factors of ten, but depends on the context/scale in question. It often does mean powers of ten, because most of what we discuss is measured in decimal. However, if I say I have one megabyte of storage available on my flash drive but I actually have thirty, I am off by (approximately) five orders of magnitude, not one. Perhaps this usage is specific to computer science, however.
John McWhorter has pointed out that 'literally' has been used in the way you describe going back at least to the 19th century. The meaning of words changes over time etc. I do think that this usage of 'literally' can interfere with the usage of the word to mean 'not figurative' , and I find that annoying.
The phrase I've enjoyed puzzling over lately is 'intermittent fasting'. I've known a number of methods of fasting, but I've never known a single one that was not intermittent. At least one done by choice.
> “Chemical” is used as a vague negative term for the sorts of icky things that organic food is supposed to not have.
Personally I think all chemicals should be banned, the worst one of which is Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), a colourless odourless liquid used as an industrial solvant and a coolant in nuclear power stations. Did you know that in autopsies, many people who died of cancer had traces of DHMO in their bodies? Join my campaign to ban DHMO now!
A good one for aspiring pedants. It’s a lot of fun.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40063024
I recall reading a Matt Helm pulp novel in the mid 1970s. Mr. Helm knew that a message was not authentic because the purported author would never use the phrase ‘decimated to the last man.’
Words mean what they're commonly used to mean. Dictionaries describe usage, and that's what dictionary compilers think they're doing. They're not trying to tell people what words should mean, they're describing the things they can mean.
Literally has meant figuratively for literally thousands of years.
And if you're going to insist that 'chemical' is a synonym for 'matter' then we'll need another word for 'novel substance which was not commonly present in the environment in which we evolved', which is what people actually mean by 'chemical'. Even *chemists* don't think of water as a chemical, or write 'chemical store' on the doors of all the cupboards where there are things.
I am sad about 'exponential' though, because I can remember when it meant something precise in mathematics. I think it started during the pandemic when people started to use it to mean 'curve bends upwards'. We're going to have to accept that we've lost it and make up another word for the concept of geometric growth.