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What petty hill will you die on?

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thrawn@beehaw.org
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chat@beehaw.org
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For me I say that a truck with a cab longer than its bed is not a truck, but an SUV with an overgrown bumper.

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KidDogDad@beehaw.org
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Former linguistics grad student here: The meaning of “literal” is changing, and sentences like “That guy is literally 500 years old” are correct.

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circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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Yes. Ling PhD here – after teaching for 10+ years, the thing most people consistently do not understand about language is: the dictionary does not define what words mean. Dictionaries at best are a representation of what words meant at one time, and those meanings change quickly and pervasively enough that there is constantly a non-zero* number of words for which the dictionary is already wrong.

*in actuality it’s probably significantly higher than what is connotated by “non-zero”

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geissi@feddit.de
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While I don’t support language prescriptivism just for the sake of it, there should be a common understanding what words mean.
Otherwise language loses its function to accurately and effectively transport information, no?

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