You Must Spread Some Reputation around...
- Thread starter Frood
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Brian
Brian
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2009
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aw shit it's on now
Frood
a true bro
You mean "people who are right" vs "people who are wrong" arguments? I agree.
Yes, people are wrong about a lot of things, but they still do them anyway. Champing/chomping, stamping/stomping are two egregious ones, but it think I hate people misusing "monkey off one's back" more.
Irregardless, is it more important to be right, or convey meaning?
Frood
a true bro
All joking aside, I wonder about this a lot. Language is a living/dynamic thing. Cool means lots of things, but it didn't mean what it means now until people started using it that way. Dank, gnarly, epic, etc...have all evolved. Does that make their usage wrong, or is the definition outdated?
Saying "chomping at the bit" is inaccurate because the noise horseys make when they clap their teeth together is actually called "champing," and when horses want to go go go, they champ on their bits to let the human know. However, it could be chomping now because enough people say it.
It is frustrating, because on the one hand I'm right, but on the other, there was no letter "S" until one day there was.
Saying "chomping at the bit" is inaccurate because the noise horseys make when they clap their teeth together is actually called "champing," and when horses want to go go go, they champ on their bits to let the human know. However, it could be chomping now because enough people say it.
It is frustrating, because on the one hand I'm right, but on the other, there was no letter "S" until one day there was.
Devastation the Almighty
Ninja Wizard
Divide by zero; try again.
Frood
a true bro
I think champing at the bit is an interesting one, because "clapping your teeth together on something" is well... chomping. Chomping at the bit perfectly describes what's happening, it's just not the original phrase, it's still an accurate description.
And yes, language evolves, but I think we can still call use of a word wrong. I can't just obliterate a word wherever I want and then claim "Oh no, I meant 'obliterate' as 'replace'."That's just not how it works. I think language should evolve when there is a shortcoming. Dank and gnarly for example. My understanding of "dank" is that it's used to describe really good weed, a word that probably didn't exist before people started smoking weed, so they had to make it up. Originally dank meant a dark and wet and kind of dirty, and it does have a cool ring to it. So they took that word, and applied it to weed. Same for surfers and gnarly, it stems from gnarled, meaning curved, bent out of shape, and applied it to waves. A big curly wave is called gnarly, because it's curled and gnarled has some dangerous connotations, and big waves are dangerous. Those are invented words, based on other words with semi-similar meaning, and they described something actually new. And then stoners and surfers started using those words outside of their original context, and they caught on, but only in a slangy way. Dank and dank aren't the same word, they are homonyms, with similar roots, and neither definition is wrong. This doesn't apply to the pentagram with six sides argument though, because A) It's a mathematical term and B) the root is clearly descriptive (drawing of five). It's like if surfer started using "flat" as a slang term for really great surf conditions. "Aw damn dude, the waters fuckin' flat today!" Could they use it as slang? Sure, would it be really really stupid? Absolutely, because the meaning of "flat" is pretty much the exact opposite of what they'd be describing. To a small group of people who were in on it, it makes sense, to anyone else, it's a profoundly stupid use of the sound "flat", and would probably never ever catch on, because the goal of language is to reduce ambiguity, not increase it. I stand by my original stance: Calling a star with not-five points a pentagram is stupid, and for all intents and purposes, wrong.
Frood
a true bro
You forgot to log back in as neffy before trolling.