I’ve always said the dictionary is a follower not a leader, by the time a word gets added to the dictionary it’s already established widespread usage
Meh, seems cromulent.
Adequately pondiferous.
The same rules apply to gods, according to Terry Pratchet
The problem is that people frequently use this type of argument when they are unable to spell or follow the basic rules of syntax and grammar instead of simply admitting they’re wrong.
Language does change, over time and across many cultures. It doesn’t mean that anything you write is automatically correct.
Gonna go on Countdown with the line “Dictionaries aren’t rule books, they’re record books” and fight Susie Dent.
Académie Française: <<Ahem – pardon et moi?>>
Try it, she’ll fuck you up with a bike chain (her weapon of choice in pub fights)
I’ve always been a big advocate of the idea that the only part of communication that matters is communication. If people understand you then congrats you’ve successfully languaged
And still I maintain that “alot” is not a word.
Mine, too! I hope Allie is doing well these days.
She made a reddit comment a couple months ago
God i love alot
Frankly this wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for “another”
Which some who use “alot” consider as two words.
That has to do with the definition of what a word even is (an open problem!). “Alot” is clearly made up of two separate units, but so is “anyway”. I think a lot of people don’t like this one because it’s simply unnecessary. You need “anyway” to show that the two words are not stressed separately, but treated as one unit, whereas with “a lot” this is already obvious (“a” is almost never stressed).
Also has to do with English spelling just being bad, generally.
I love militant descriptivists
we love you too
End prescriptuhvist speling! We haf nuthing to loose butt hour wigly red underlyns!
Ow. What did I do to you?!
That hurt to read… Kudos!
As a l33+ |><|@z0r, I’m here to criticize your command of the English language.
You just described 90% of Lemmy users.
Great post, I offer my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.
I agree, a perfectly crommulant statement from a Word Warrior.
I’m anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.
Once upon a time there was a lovely little sausage called Baldrick
Have you considered medial advice from a lingual artificer?
That said I feel like when people are referring to whether or not something “is a word” they’re referring to whether not is has seen historical/widespread usage, not “has somebody ever just decided it meant something, somewhere, at some point”
most often it’s said to dismiss people. AAVE gets a lot of that. but it’s used to mock and dismiss young people too by the “back in my day” crew.
I know who AvE is; who’s AAVE?
African American Vernacular English… what’s AvE?
AvE is a YouTuber.
While that’s correct and all, it still irks me when somebody uses a word that has a shorter, older variant. (Gives side-eye to orientated)
orientated
Is this common in American English? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word oriented double handled like that. Irregardless, it slew me
Never seen it here.
“Orientated” is reasonably common in British English, I think. I remember thinking someone had misspelt it the first time I saw “oriented” written down.
One thing I learned as an information technology engineer: language is a tool for communication. As long as the sender can send its message unobstructed and as long as the receiver receives and understands the message as intended, the information transmission can be considered a successs.
Just remember that language is an imprecise tool, and all too often the actual intended meaning that one is trying to convey, will get misunderstood.
“refrigerate” at least has sensible etymological roots in its constituent components.
The problem with brain rot lingo is that it isn’t constructed from precedent but a decay therefrom, corrupted by niche “meta” references that are little more than inside jokes that escaped their in-group, divorced of the context that brought them about.
…
Then again, though, the most popular word that humans speak all over the world is “OK”, which is itself a memetic corruption of a fad, wherein people were saying “All Correct” with a deliberately exaggerated fake British accent: “Oll Korrect” (which became abbreviated).
And brain rot does have the fact that it’s very funny going for it. It sounds silly which makes it fun to say and it pisses people off which makes it even funnier, because getting mad about it is a drastic overreaction. So I don’t think it’ll even really BECOME an actual serious problem, because the moment it hits mainstream and corporations start publishing commercials about “skibidi Ohio GYATT” it’s going to implode like “it’s morbin time” burned Sony.
Otherwise, constructing new words out of extant etymological particles is DELIGHTFULLY useful. In Minecraft, I built an Enfenestrator:
A window through which zombies throw themselves into a catchment chamber for culling and (when zombified villagers are isolated) curing.“Divorced from the context that brought them about” Ahh, so you’re complaining about all the Germanic words in English, or the Latin words? The whole point of their diatribe is that the “brain rot” words you hate are little different from most words. It’s just that for some words the “in group” is Latin speakers, and for some words it’s some group nerding out about their own topic that spread their word to the rest of us… actually, I’m still talking about Latin speakers.
A newer word (than fridge) is “selfie”. Nothing wrong with that one.
ferpectly cromulent!
Disagree. This is a slippery slope that can end being covered in covfefe.
