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We need a word for "literally" that doesn't also mean "not literally" (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Since it's widely accepted that the word "literally" can be used to add emphasis, we need another word that can be used when you want to make it clear that you really mean "literally" in the original sense.

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[–] 28 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

Trying to proscribe a particular usage is a doomed effort. You may as well literally command the tides to turn back. You're really tilting at windmills. It's seriously like mocking a clown. It's exponentially harder than...

no, wait, we can still save "exponentially"! It doesn't just mean a lot! It has important properties that differentiate it from linear or polynomial systems that make predicting outcomes-

small, linguistic drowning noises

EDIT: small, linguistic surfacing noises

I thought of another one, rational used to just mean "possible to express as a ratio" before it got co-opted by the academic-industrial complex-

smaller, somehow more pathetic linguistic drowning noises

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    rational used to just mean "possible to express as a ratio before it got co-opted by the academic-industrial complex- "

    Hmmm.... when you say "academic" do you mean the Academy of ancient Greece? Because I'm guessing that's around when that mix-up first happened.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Now that I think about it I'm less sure that it was such a mistake. A rational number is one that can be expressed as a fraction, so the full number is expressible (vs irrational numbers which can only be approximated or represented as symbols, like PI. I think). If an idea is "rational", then the whole idea (all the antecedents and the conclusion) is expressible in a logical system, whereas an "irrational" idea can't be expressed as a logical structure. I think "rational" as a shorthand for "has a finite logical definition" is pretty reasonable.

    I just looked it up, and according to wikipedia I have it backwards, the number groups were named "rational" and "irrational" according to whether they were sayable or unsayable, which makes sense. Though one of the references in that section is just to... a guy on stackexchange paraphrasing what he read in the OED, so not sure I'm buying that page 100%. More research is needed.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I think the lesson to learn here is that it is easier to kill a word by adding a new meaning than by policing how other people use it.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Eradicating a colloquial definition is like eradicating a virus, except anyone can crack open an old book at any time and revive it with their mind. I'm sure there are some meanings that have truly died i.e. there are no surviving records of them on earth, but they sure seem resilient. That's before considering that the circumstances that give rise to one meaning might easily reoccur and cause the same meaning to rise again, perhaps under a new name. Sort of a convergent evolution for words, if you will.

    I think the best we can hope to do is nudge words into more useful meanings, and create new words when our old words get overloaded.

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