My pet peeve is ‘loose’ being used when ‘lose’ is intended. It’s so common now it might as well be the new spelling but I will die on this hill. I’ve had people comment in response to me correcting someone like I’m being ridiculous. Feels like I’m taking crazy pills!
If it’s only morons that use it “wrong”, then it does indeed become right, but still gains the added subtext of “by the way I’m also a moron”
So I should accept people saying “could care less” when they mean the exact opposite? Not sure I can do that.
I think we should bring back philosohoraptor - Morpheus seems wrong for this meme
What if they all use it ‘wrong’ but all use it differently?
classic case of the four-leaved-clover story
edit:
And I’m still gonna removed about it if they’ve reduced the usefulness of a word due to habitual misuse!
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.
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.
Prescriptivists should be shoved into all the lockers in the world.
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 mean this i show it literally works, right?
Ok ok… I’ll be the one…
“Wrongly”
no worries I’ll use it the wrongliest
You can always go wrongliester!
Good wrongliesterness.
I’ll use it righteously.
I’m gonna use it wrongteously
not not-heinous
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?
He wrongly assumed he was using the word wrongly.
Very bigly, indeed!
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”.
Playly not nice.
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.
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.”
My pet example is Americans and “ironically/unironically”.
Please don’t do this to me
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.
Didn’t english literally develop in an insular community (britain)?
There were a lot more langauges on those isles long before and during the [still ongoing] development of english, and during the empire connecting to more of the world more than any other in history… so, not so insular during its development.
English is what you get when a community can’t defend its borders and keeps being taken over by new rulers with a different language, which then works its way partly into common usage. Also, random word borrowing, because fuck you it’s ours now.
Not insular enough to be isolated, hence that saying about it being three languages in a trenchcoat.
Of course not isolated, but insular, literally.
Descriptive
languagegrammar >> prescriptivelanguagegrammar
